


Zoey In Distress

by tooshoes (orphan_account)



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Damsels in Distress, Dubious Consent, Exhibitionism, F/F, F/M, Hypnotism, Implied/Referenced Child Pornography, Mind Control, Multi, Non-Consensual Spanking, Nymphomania, Original Character(s), Peril, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Harassment, Spanking, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Superheroines in Peril, Underage Sex, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-04-13 23:34:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14123259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/tooshoes
Summary: Bruce wonders if being the good guy is for suckers. An innocent man gets no respect. Good guys don't get the girl. For his 18th birthday, Bruce decides to toss aside his goody-two-shoes reputation and visit a Gotham strip club.There he meets a most unusual stripper.Zoey was raised in the club since infancy. Her coworkers were like her family, and becoming a stripper was merely a rite of passage. She had lived a strangely sheltered life, but like Bruce, she wants to change her image and be seen as a grown-up.Their modest plans are shattered by a potion and a tragedy that draws Zoey and Bruce together -- much to Selina's dismay.The unusual potion bestows Zoey with powers, but only with the most shameful of side-effects, which constantly put her in compromising situations.





	1. A Sheltered Life

**Author's Note:**

> This story follows canon up until S4E17 (when I started writing it)
> 
> This story contains a number of squicks and triggers. Pay attention to the warnings! These warnings were not made lightly.

Frank asks for a glass of wine, so I reach under the bar for the half-filled bottle and pour him a glass.

Usually, I’m serving him white wine, but today it is red. That’s all I know about the wine because Frank brings it to the bar himself and pays me to serve it to him. I never even look at the label. We don’t usually serve wine, red or white, being that the Kindling Club is a strip bar where beer and hard stuff rules, but wine is what Frank likes, and he’s a big spender, so if he wants to pay me to serve him wine that he bought from somewhere else, that’s the least I can do.

I pour another glass for Marilyn, who is the stripper sitting beside him, and he slides ten dollars towards me as a tip. I smile my cutest smile and push his tip to the side, but not out of his reach. That would be rude, in case he changes his mind.

Now Frank laughs unexpectedly, and he turns towards Marilyn. “That’s wonderful! She got that smile from you!”

I hesitate before I turn away, and I know Marilyn does the same.

You see, Marilyn is my mother. She’s so young that people usually think we are sisters. She had me when she was 15 years old, so she’s only 31 now.  We pretend that we aren’t related at all.  She dyes her hair blonde instead of her natural red, and I wear cute glasses today with no lenses, just for the look. Now we don’t look quite so alike.  Of course, we both dress sexily in the strip club, but with very different styles. Marilyn dresses dark, wearing a shiny black spaghetti-strap dress with matching fuck-me shoes. I go light with a colorful mesh crochet tunic screening a white string bikini underneath. Nobody can see my plain work shoes from behind the counter.

I know what you are thinking. Why is a sixteen-year-old girl serving alcohol to her mother at a strip club?

I know that sounds weird, but it feels very natural to me. In fact, I feel like my whole life had been leading to this.

You see, I grew up in this strip club.

Literally, right here.

Seriously!

Ok, that requires some explanation.

***

It all started almost seventeen years ago when my mom was living a very different life with wealthy parents and a nice suburban home. Her name back then was Jean. She lived in a fancy suburb of Gotham and attended a super-expensive middle school.

Jean had a crush on a much older guy, and she got knocked up. She pretended like nothing was wrong until she couldn’t hide it anymore, and finally, she confessed to my grandmother that she was pregnant. My grandmother was a bitch about it, and she promptly ordered Jean to have an abortion, but Jean refused. When I was finally born, my grandmother then insisted that Jean give me up for adoption. Again, she refused, and eventually, after a string of fights, Jean swooped me up with one hand and flipped the bird as she went out the door, never looking back. I never did meet my grandparents. I hope I never do.

Now homeless, Jean was a junior high drop-out with no special skills, so raising me would be a huge challenge. Fortunately, though, she was smoking hot with a dancer’s body even after having a baby, and she had a sultry voice that reduced men to jello.

Joe Caruso, who I always called Boss back then, hired her on the spot at the Kindling Club. He saved my mom from the streets. He gave her a fake ID so she could strip, though she was only sixteen at the time, then he rented her some space above the club to use as a studio apartment. It wasn’t large enough for a mother to raise a child in, but we only slept there. The club was always my real home. In fact, when I was very young, Boss said that all of the men who hung around the club were my uncles, and all of the strippers were my sisters. It seems childish now, maybe even a little creepy to some people, but I still feel that way even today. Many strippers say that the Kindling Club is the best strip club around, so I felt privileged to live there.

Like most strippers, Jean chose a new name for the stage: Marilyn. After trying the name out for a while, she decided she liked it, and then Marilyn wouldn’t let anyone call her anything else, including me. She wouldn’t even let me call her “mom,” especially in front of customers. She was Marilyn, and I knew her as just one of my many sisters – but the sister I felt closest to. She was the only sister that was always there, day and night, and who never moved away.

So, as you can see, my life and my family, if I can call them that, were anything but normal. A lot of people called it inappropriate. I just called it home.

When I was a toddler, I spent all of my time in the back area watching Sesame Street on a small TV while “my sisters” dressed and undressed around me. Marilyn would watch with me sometimes, trying to get me to like the nice characters, but my favorite was Oscar the Grouch. The little green guy was such a trouble maker, breaking all the rules.

By the time I was five, everyone tells me that I was turning into a brat, running around the club and yelling before the doors opened, and once I allegedly disrupted a bachelor party when everyone thought I was asleep. I don’t remember that.

But Boss took me in the back and gave me a serious spanking! I do remember the spanking.

Boss and Marilyn felt guilty that I wasn’t meeting other kids or getting an education, so they enrolled me in a public school. I started in the first grade, and I got only A’s and B’s until the third grade. But teachers were getting concerned. They noticed how I walked, like a tiny stripper parading on stage. They noticed how I flirted with everyone I met. When my classmates discovered where I lived, and all hell broke loose.

After that, Marilyn decided to homeschool me – except that she didn’t have enough education for that job. So after only a couple of months, she just stopped trying and let me spend all of my time in the club, and that was where I was happiest, anyway. She provided me with many books and magazines to educate myself, and I proved that I could read them all, so I think I came out pretty smart.

But I was only eight or nine, and I was stuck in the club all day, every day. So I got restless, and I pulled some pranks, like setting off the fire alarm or telling customers that I was a stripper. Boss didn’t have much patience for that, and he would take me in the back and spank me harder because I wasn’t learning the lessons. Then, one day, when “Uncle” Jervis was very rude to me, I flipped him the finger. Boss didn’t listen to my side of the story; instead, he bent me over and slapped me right in front of Uncle Jervis and everyone else at the bar. I was crying loudly, and it was very embarrassing, especially because I wasn’t wearing underwear.

The next day, Boss apologized to me, saying that he lost his temper.

He never hit me again, but he also wouldn't talk to me or even look at me, to the point that I began wishing for a spanking.

Marilyn always worried that some government people would come to take me away, and one social worker did stop by a few times, asking me a lot of questions. I was coached about how to answer, but when the social worker asked me if I’d like to live anywhere else, I adamantly said, “No, they love me here!” The social worker came back again a couple of times, but then Boss paid some kind of fee, and finally they left me alone.

Boss smiled and said, “You don’t need to worry about them again,” and I cried because now I knew he cared about me.

I know that to most people this life sounds very inappropriate for a child of any age, but I felt I was luckier than those kids who had to go to school every day in that hell-hole Gotham. During those few years I attended school, I only remember being bullied, betrayed and bored, and all my sisters told me that school doesn’t get any better. Whenever I left the club and traveled to Gotham City, I felt lucky if people ignored me.

But I was never bored when I was in the club, and whenever a bully got out of line there, bouncers simply threw them out.  A lot of interesting people talked to me in the club, and I felt like I learned more than I would had I continued with public schooling.

People who’ve heard about my life automatically assume that I’m traumatized or somehow damaged by what they see as an amoral environment, but they don’t understand how much love I experience at the club, and just about any home can be a happy place if there is love.

Most of the regulars were super-nice to me, treating me like a princess. A few jokingly talked about how pretty I was, and how they looked forward to seeing me on stage one day. Such anticipation did not go over well with Boss, but it excited me. I idolized my big sisters and admired what they did, and I saw how beautiful and confident they were while they worked. I really couldn‘t imagine myself doing anything else with my life.

I dreamed of joining my sisters on stage one day, but Marilyn kept pushing me in other directions. She wanted for me to have the opportunities that she never had. Sometimes she cried, saying that she was so sorry that I couldn’t keep my innocence for longer.

She always thought of me as a little girl, even now at sixteen years old. She was buying me childish toys as recently as last year, and she raised me on Disney movies. I loved the movies where the girl didn't do as she was told. I would watch in the back whenever I was alone, sometimes even now. I got some strange ideas from those movies. Of course, I always imagined myself as a Disney princess, and whenever a new man visited the bar, I imagined he was a prince. Who else would I fantasize about? I almost never saw boys my own age, and the only courtships I witnessed were men paying money for attention, table dances and stripteases. They were all older men looking for the company of young women. I saw myself as merely younger than the rest. In the movies, men were always the lovers, and girls were the love objects, so that’s what I wanted to be.

I was a cheerful and loving child, so long as people thought I was beautiful.

Being called beautiful was like oxygen to me, because if I weren’t beautiful, then I wouldn’t belong in the Kindling Club, and I could never be a stripper. Being a stripper was more than just a dream of mine  – it was who I was born to be. I seriously thought that if I couldn’t be a stripper, I couldn’t do anything and would eventually die on the streets. So, I watched my weight like a hawk and fretted over any imperfection. I desperately needed reassurances of my appearance, because, without that, my life was worthless.

I had my first period when I was only nine years old, and my tenth birthday gifted me even more changes. I didn't like it one bit. Marilyn said that I was becoming a young woman, but I thought I was just becoming fat.

Soon after that, a handsome man with a greying mustache showed up at the club, and he told me that I was beautiful. He visited me almost every day, always with a gift, and he loved hearing whatever I had to say.

Every time I tell people this story, they automatically think they know where it is going, and they aren’t wrong. The experience didn't bother me back then, but everyone overreacted, and it was very upsetting. I don't really like thinking about it.

I called this new patron of the club Mr. Bob, because he didn’t like it when I referred to him as “uncle.” He talked with a few of the strippers, but only with the youngest ones, and he talked with me more than anyone else. Marilyn was wary of him right away, seeing that wrong hunger in his eyes, but it didn't pay to be judgmental in a strip club. She let me talk with Mr. Bob, but she always asked me later what we talked about. She never forbade me to hang around with him at the bar, because we were always sitting out in the open, and she didn’t think he would try anything there.

Mr. Bob was always nice to me, at first.  He was fun to talk to because he knew all about Disney movies.

Then I told him I never wore panties under my skirts. Even at ten years old, I knew it was a naughty secret to tell, but I thought it would make him like me more.

Instead, he acted like I had offended him somehow. He started complaining about little things. For example, one of my chores was cleaning the bar, and he would often show me dirty spots I missed. Sometimes he complained that I didn’t appreciate him. When I laughed, he sometimes cringed and said my laugh wasn’t attractive. I almost cried and stopped laughing when he was nearby.

But soon he was nice to me again, like nothing had happened. He told me that his favorite Disney movie was The Little Mermaid, and that I looked just like Ariel with my red hair. I watched that movie maybe a dozen times after that, looking in the mirror, wanting to see whatever he saw.

Then, during Halloween, he bought me a Little Mermaid costume. Marilyn didn’t like the idea of a club regular giving presents to a ten-year-old, but after a little begging, she relented, and I danced around the club on Halloween. My sisters danced on stage behind me completely naked, but Mr. Bob only had eyes for me, and I loved that.

Now Mr. Bob was nice to me all of the time, and I was afraid of disappointing him, again.

He said I looked so beautiful in the costume but bemoaned that he couldn’t take any photographs in the bar. Club rules. A few days later, he gave me a cute Polaroid camera as a gift, saying that he hoped my mom would let me keep it – or just maybe it could be our little secret. I agreed, of course, feeling a little naughty, but I also got a thrill from having a secret. I took some selfies of myself in the costume and gave them to Mr. Bob the next time he visited.

He thanked me so much, even though it was obvious from the poorly framed and blurry photos that I had never used a camera before. Then he laughed cruelly at the only good photo, mentioning that the shell bikini-top looked so fake.

I pouted, feeling that he was mocking my appearance and was turning mean again, but then he raised my spirits, telling me that the problem was with the costume, not with me. “It’s really silly, isn’t it, that Ariel wears those ridiculous clamshells,” he said as he brushed his hand over my tit. “Those Disney cartoons are so square; if mermaids were real, they wouldn’t be wearing any tops at all.”

He gave me a few tips for using the camera, and the next time we met, I gave him photos of me in the costume – but topless this time. I was self-conscious about the tiny buds that were my breasts, but again he told me how beautiful I looked. He compared me to the girls that were dancing on the stage, saying that I was more beautiful than any of them, so I kissed him on the cheek. “But Halloween is over,” he added, “and that fin looks silly now, doesn’t it?”

Even at ten, I knew where this was going, but I played along.

I said that I wished I was a real mermaid with a real fin.

“Nonsense,” he replied, “even Ariel knows it’s better to have legs. When she sprouts legs, I feel like cheering, because she is so beautiful when she swims up to the beach, leaving those fins behind,” he added.

I knew what he wanted, and I didn’t want to disappoint him, yet I hesitated. The secrets I was keeping from my sisters didn’t feel like white lies, anymore. But Mr. Bob saw my reluctance, and he didn’t get angry; instead, he switched gears. He led me from the bar to seats near the stage, and we watched Samantha, who was dancing on the stage, laying down spread eagle for her tippers to see. “Look at her,” Mr. Bob said with a hint of disgust. “Whenever I see hair down there, I think it looks gross. I’m sure when Ariel got her legs, she was smooth all over.”

I was excited because I didn’t have any body hair at all. I was still too young. The next day, I came back with the pictures he desired. I had mastered the camera now, learning how to use the remote shutter and even how to use the tiny tripod he gave me. I had fun practicing the same poses and smiles that I had watched my sisters perform every day.

When he saw the new photos, I could see the excitement in his eyes, greater than the excitement I ever saw in any man for a stripper. He was looking at me differently, now, and I know I was looking at him differently, too. I sensed danger, but he had me hooked, and, like an expert fisherman, he would not let me get escape. “You are so beautiful,” he said, “it’s a shame they keep you hidden away, like Cinderella. You could be a real star if you only learned how to feel passion.”

“Really?” I asked excitedly. “How do I learn that?”

He gave me a Cinderella video and told me to study it, but only do it when nobody was around. He also gave me the smallest movie camera I had ever seen, then he said “Merry Christmas,” even though Christmas was still two weeks away.

Later, when I played the innocent looking VHS tape, about halfway into the cartoon the feature switched to an amateur video of a pretty girl my age masturbating and playing with children’s toys.

I can do that, I thought, and so I made my first movie.

These exchanges went on for three more weeks. He kept flattering me, giving me toys and ever more graphic videos hidden within Disney trappings. Each gift challenged me, daring me to do more, to show more. I proudly proved I was up to the challenge.

Finally, Marilyn got suspicious when she found one of the photos I had discarded. Soon after that, she found a lolicon anime video he gave me, and finally a cassette that was still inside the video recorder of me fucking my pussy with a crayon.

She was devastated. She pulled me into the dressing room with all of my sisters and yelled at me. She accused me of leading him on and called me a slut. Then she apologized, crying, wailing that it was all her fault. Finally, she kneeled in front of me; she held my hands and smiled desperately through tears and asked, "Did he touch you?" I froze, knowing that she meant so much more than a simple touch. "Oh God, Zoey, did he touch you?" I shook my head nervously, and she wrapped her arms around me and cradled my head to her breast. 

Everyone at the club was making such a big deal about it. I was mortified. Even my most pervy uncles were on the lookout for when Mr. Bob next returned, but Mr. Bob never showed his face again, and after a few weeks they mostly forgot about him.

In the meantime, Marilyn and my adoptive family scolded me for keeping secrets, and I apologized, but I didn’t understand what the big deal was. What I did for Mr. Bob didn’t seem very different from what my sisters did every day. Besides, I got two cool cameras, a lot of gifts, and an education, just for having some fun.

“You should have held out for more,” Samantha joked. Nobody laughed but me.

Marilyn took me aside and read me a story about a naïve little girl named Little Red Riding Hood. In this version, the wolf eats the little girl. “That man only wanted you for one thing,” she told me.

I rolled my eyes. I was not that naïve, I thought. I knew Mr. Bob was no prince charming. I thought he was my first fan. He was fun to be around. He was giving me things, and I was showing him things in return. He would compliment me and tell me things that would make me want to take my clothes off, without ever asking me directly. He desired me, and I enjoyed that.  I was playing adult games.

I had no idea that Mr. Bob had manipulated me to feel that way, but soon after that, I learned the difference between having a fan and having a predator. I learned the dangers of adult games. I learned that the scariest secrets are those you keep from yourself.

After the Mr. Bob incident, everyone in the bar treated me like I was some delicate thing. Most of the sisters were afraid to talk to me about it, and a few thought I needed therapy, but Boss shot them down. “Who isn’t a little fucked up in this city?” he said. “She’s safe here, and we can handle this on our own.”

Two years later, I learned that the selfies I had taken for Mr. Bob's viewing pleasure were distributed around the child porn underworld under the pseudonym Ariel. Fortunately, nobody recognized me from those photos and videos. At least, nobody said anything to me. That would have been awkward for them.

But not for me. I don't like thinking about everything that went down with Mr. Bob, but I was quite proud of those photos. People are usually shocked when I say that, but it makes perfect sense to me.  I know kids beyond these windowless walls dream very different dreams from me. They dream of being doctors and lawyers and tradesmen, and their parents congratulate them when they learn and practice appropriate skills. But for me, my dream was to be a stripper, just like all of my sisters. What outsiders saw as child pornography, I saw as me practicing my art. 

Nobody saw it my way, insisting that because I was only ten, my judgment sucked. My sisters wanted to protect me from making any more bad decisions, so they took control of my access to the television. It felt very unfair to me. They would only let me watch TV in the dressing room, and they checked out all of the VHS films before giving them to me. Somehow, they thought they were sheltering me, but that was crazy.

They were relieved when they saw me watching Beauty and the Beast and Labyrinth. They didn’t know that I was imagining the pornographic potential while I watched.

When they weren’t paying attention, I snuck onto one of my sisters’ computers. I watched a gang-bang porno, and I imagined the moaning girl in the center was Snow White doing it with the dwarfs. To me, it didn’t matter whether a movie was a porno or from Disney, every story between boys and girls and men and women were the same. Everyone was sweet and innocent with hearts of gold, but everyone also had hungers and played games trying to get what they wanted. Sometimes the games went too far, and someone got hurt. It was thrilling and frightening and educational.

But I learned the lessons too well; not everyone wanted the same thing.

One day, Boss sat down beside me in the dressing room before the club opened. He was holding a half-eaten hamburger, and we watched cartoons side-by-side. “Wow, Bugs Bunny. That brings back memories,” he said.

“It’s funny, right?” I said politely, but I felt anxious. We had been on pins and needles ever since the Mr. Bob incident.

After watching a silly scene between Bugs and Elmer, he laughed, then I laughed sympathetically.

Then, out of the blue, he started asking me questions that scared me. Questions like: “Do you like living here?” “Don’t you want to hang around with other kids?” “Do you want to go back to school?”

I started crying, saying, “I love it here, and I don’t care about other kids. Everyone in school was mean. I don’t ever want to leave here. Please don’t make me!”

He was surprised by my outburst, and I cowered for a moment, thinking he might slap me. But he just looked sad and wiped a tear from my eyes. I grabbed him, forcing him to hug me. He patted my back gently and said, “Don’t worry kid. You’ll always have a home here.”

The next day, after the club shut down for the night, he invited me to watch TV with him in the bar area. We had a huge TV there for sporting events, but he liked to watch other shows when the club was closed. Just about everyone else had gone home, and Marilyn went out partying, so it was just him and me at 1:30 AM. I usually went to bed after closing time, but he never asked me to watch TV with him before, so I curiously slunk onto a chair beside him.

“Do you want to watch that Mermaid flic?” he asked. “That’s your favorite, right?”

I shook my head.

He picked up another Disney film, and I just rolled my eyes.

He shrugged then started surfing through channels, asking me what I thought, and I kept shaking my head. Then he settled on the Sopranos, and I could see he was into that, so that’s what I wanted to watch, too.

We watched quietly for a few minutes, and then he thought he’d better explain the drama that was unfolding in the show. There was a lot of complicated relationship stuff, and I wasn’t interested in that, but I was interested in him.  I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him. He was talking to me like I was a grown-up. Eventually, he stopped talking about the show altogether and started complaining about the cops and how the gangs were so much worse in Gotham than on the show.

At one point, he looked so stressed, I thought he might have a heart attack.

I stood up and walked behind him and started rubbing his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” he spat out suspiciously.

“This is what Marilyn does when her men feel bad,” I replied.

He laughed a little, then relaxed and talked more calmly.

Now he seemed happier. It seemed like when I touched him, he calmed down, and he started talking about some of the funnier things that happened that day.

He didn’t notice that I was taking off my clothes while I wasn’t rubbing his shoulders.

Then when I walked back in front of him, his mouth dropped.

“Do you want me to dance?” I asked nervously, as I moved closer, touching his arm, wondering how I could straddle him like I saw my sisters do to their customers in the private areas.

He looked away and whispered, “Put your clothes on, Zoey.”

“I’m sorry,” I said while covering myself shyly and sitting down again. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

He looked at me sympathetically. “Do you think that’s why I stopped you?”

I shrugged. “Maybe when I’m a little older,” I suggested.

He shook his head. “Listen, Zoey, I’ve seen you skipping around here since you were in diapers. You are growing up quickly now, and I can already tell you are going to be a real hottie in a few years,” he said, intending to be sweet. “You’ve heard me tell everyone that all of my girls are like my daughters, but I really mean it with you. I will never _want_ you that way, not even when you are older.”

I was disappointed at first, because if he didn’t desire me, why would he care about me at all? But the more I thought about it, the happier his words made me. He was telling me that he loved me as a person, as a daughter, and I didn’t know that a man could love me without asking for something in return.

I had thought that only happened in fairy tales.

If he saw me as his daughter, then I wanted him to be my daddy, and I was excited to know what that would mean.

We watched the Sopranos again the next day. Then the day after. It became a thing that would last for weeks, and when we talked, I would call him Daddy. He felt uncomfortable at first, but he never complained. After each episode ended, he would tussle my hair around affectionately and say, “Ok, time to hit the sack,” and I would never get tired of those moments.

Eventually, I would call him Daddy all the time. He even began introducing me to regulars as his daughter – not merely LIKE his daughter, as before. When one guy challenged him on this, he laughed and said, “Well, I’m claiming her on my tax returns; doesn’t that make it official?”

The rest of the club seemed to think our relationship was weird, especially Marilyn, but Daddy was making me so happy. It had always felt like nobody wanted to be my parent. Even Marilyn called me her sister. I couldn’t pick a better father, I thought. Joe was a powerful man. He had money. He had important friends. He was as strong and protective as the bouncers. And he loved me. Like real love, not the kind the regulars talked about all of the time. He loved me in a way I never believed in before.

I worried that he would get tired of pretending, but then Daddy showed me some papers that said my name was Zoey Caruso – his last name! I hugged him with tears in my eyes, thinking that he had adopted me. Later I found out that he had someone create a fake identity for me, but it still meant that he loved me.

I've learned a lot about life and love since those days, and as an early bloomer, my body changed fast.

First, a patch of wispy hairs appeared on my pussy, which freaked me out. Body hair had always freaked me out even before Mr. Bob put his two cents into my head. I would not allow it. I started shaving down there every day. Then twice a day. Then hairs were growing in new places, and I was so afraid that I had missed some that I asked my sisters to help me shave. Eventually, Marilyn told Daddy that I had an obsession with body hair and he paid for laser hair removal. The pain was so worth it! I couldn’t thank him enough, even before I knew how much it cost him.

By that time, my breasts were well past A cup size. I didn't like it at first. I felt ugly.

But the men in the Kindling Club disagreed. They stopped looking at me like I was a little girl. Daddy gave me small jobs to do around the club, and I was beginning to distract the customers. One time a barfly grabbed me and pulled me onto his lap. The bouncers were all over him, and that was the last time anyone saw that creep’s face. I laughed it off; I even felt a little tickled that he found me so attractive. But a few months later, another man tried to pull me into the men’s room, which was scary.

I was at an awkward age. Calling customers “uncle” wasn’t so cute anymore, but I was still too young to flirt with them.

Marilyn thought it was dangerous for me to be walking about the bar at this age, but Daddy said, “Nah, she’s tough enough. She just needs to know how to defend herself.”

Daddy hired a tutor for me, to teach me karate. Soon I was going to a dojo to get better. Before the club opened, I would practice with the bouncers, and they pretended to let me win. I have no illusions about that. Still, within a few months, I felt much more confident when dealing with the grabbier patrons in the club.

I wasn't afraid anymore of the drunk, pervy men. It was actually kind of exciting now. It was just another sign that I was getting older, and I knew it meant I was getting closer to joining my sisters on the stage. I always knew I was destined to be a dancer, and I welcomed it. Getting older was now exciting.

But it was also very confusing. Just as I was getting used to the changes to my body, I was blindsided by the changes to my feelings. I felt like I was changing into a different person.

After hours, one of the dancers was teaching me some really sexy moves, and she really turned me on as I'd never been turned on before. Was I into girls? But then I saw this freaking god boy walk in one day, and he left me a quivering mess. Of course, I was into guys, too. But even a statue of a unicorn sent shivers through me, and I didn't fucking know what to do with myself.

Then, during an amateur night, I heard something that let me get my hormones under control. Daddy was talking to a nervous girl who never danced before in public, and he gave her this advice: "Make it your fantasy to be their fantasy."

I loved that, and it was such a relief, because it was always my fantasy, anyway. Whenever I had practiced with the pole during after hours, I imagined that my "uncles" were drooling over me. When I touched myself at night, I imagined them doing whatever they wanted with me on stage, and I came every time. Nothing else got me as excited. But I never told anyone because I was very young when I first pretended, and I felt ashamed. But now it was my motto because Daddy gave me permission. I believed that one day, those fantasies would make me a great stripper.

But I was not there, yet.

My sisters noticed when I began acting differently with my uncles, laughing awkwardly at their stupid jokes and even gushing to my sisters in the dressing room how attractive a few of the patrons were. They laughed at me, saying that I had a lot of wising up to do.

By the time I was fifteen, many visitors to the club already thought I was a stripper. I wondered if I looked old for my age, but Marilyn told me that men were more convinced by my movements than my appearance. My whole life had taught me how to walk and talk and act like a stripper. My habits were so ingrained that I didn’t even realize that strippers behaved differently from regular girls.

Marilyn thought I should start working in the back, away from the sex-starved customers, but I loved how they looked at me, and Daddy thought my presence was good for business. He let me sit at the bar, drink soda, and hang around with the men. I wasn’t trying to flirt, but it didn’t matter; most of the men acted like I was licking my lips and rubbing my thighs. I laughed with them and smiled with amusement at how silly I was making them. Everything I said seemed to fascinate them, and their hunger turned me on, so I treated them like princes. If I ran out of Diet Coke, they would immediately purchase another even at the crazy prices at the bar, until my body was shaking from all of the caffeine. If I complimented them about anything, it was like I made their day. If I dared touch one of their hands, I could see them swallow their saliva. Sometimes they touched me, but I never squealed. I didn’t dare tell them how old I was, or a few of them might slink out of the bar in shame. I would respect them more, but I would miss the fun.

I longed for the day when I didn’t have to hold back.

But now I’m eighteen. At least my ID says so. Daddy had me lie about my age for the past few years, and it is finally paying off because now I can serve drinks at the bar, even if I can’t drink any alcohol for myself.  I was much more excited for my fake eighteenth birthday because now I thought I could strip as well, but Daddy and Marilyn both said no. They said I should learn a more secure job first, like bartending, but I think they really wanted to prevent me from stripping for as long as possible.

It feels unfair. Even at my real age, I am already old enough to strip in Providence, and I’m no younger than Marilyn was when she started working here, but when I reminded them of that, they countered that my mom needed the job at the time to survive and that I don’t.

So, I’ve been stuck serving drinks for the past month. I had more fun when Daddy let me mingle with the customers, but Daddy let me keep most of the tips I made at the bar, so that was nice.

***

A few regulars go back many years at the club, but none of the newer ones know that Marilyn is my mother. That is how she likes it. So, she was upset when Frank mentioned that I got my smile from her.

“Shh,” she whispered. “Think you could say that any louder?”

I smile as I walk away. I don’t care who knows that Marilyn is my mother. To me, she is one of my many sisters. The distinction doesn’t mean much to me.

“Want another, Uncle Sam?” I ask the lonely looking old man rooted to his seat on the opposite side of the bar. I don’t call many men Uncle anymore, especially gawkers, but he’s been sitting in that seat for as long as I can remember.

He nods with a little glint in his eye. If he’s looking me over, I don’t want to know. I twist the cap off of a Bud and hand it to him with a flirty smile. Good for him if a smile from a pretty girl is all it takes to make him happy.

When I turn back around, I catch something I’m not supposed to see. Marilyn is reaching over to pick up her purse, which has somehow fallen to the floor, and as she does, Frank quickly slips something into her wine.

I’m about to call him out, but Frank was clumsy, and Marilyn catches him in the act.

She pushes the glass away on the bar, nearly over the edge, and gives Frank the evil eye.

“What the fuck, Frank?” Marilyn blasts. “What is your plan? Knock me out in the club? Then what?”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Frank apologizes awkwardly, struggling with his English suddenly. “It’s just to … how do you say it?  Make you less uptight?”

Marilyn stares at him for a moment, then asks, “Were you slipping me ecstasy?”

He shrugs. “Kind of. It’s my own mix.”

Marilyn digests that.

I need to explain that Frank’s name is not really Frank. It’s something Chinese, I think. But the strippers sometimes give their regulars fake names. Frank loves to talk about his job involving DNA splicing and drugs on Indian Hill. He often sounds like a mad scientist, so we started calling him Frankenstein, which evolved into the name Frank. Anyway, if Frank says he made something, we can be sure he didn’t merely mix two pills together. It is something special.

Marilyn is clearly upset with Frank, but he just got a promotion and is throwing cash around like confetti, so she sucks it up and says, “Well, don’t ever try that again. If a bouncer saw that, he’d toss you out of here on your head and they’d never let you back in.”

“Oh, of course not, I’m sorry,” Frank says as if his intentions were misunderstood.

I notice that Marilyn’s attention is being pulled elsewhere, so I follow her eyes.

Several bouncers are gathering near the entrance of the club along with a few other big men I’ve never seen before. They are huddled close with Daddy, discussing something important.

“What’s going on?” I ask Marilyn.

She shrugs, telling me this is not normal, then she stands up to check it out.

I pretend to clean up a little, but actually I’m watching what is going on. Now, Daddy and Marilyn are alone in a corner, arguing, but after a long moment, they walk up to me at the bar.

“What’s going on?” I ask nervously.

“We’ve caught a whale,” Daddy says. “It’s Bruce Wayne’s 18th birthday, and someone decided it was a good time to show him our fine establishment. Fucking bad luck that I sent Candy and Heather home. Looked like a slow night, but now we’re shorthanded. Sandy is the youngest at twenty-four, but with the kind of cash Wayne has been throwing away at Sirens, we need someone younger.”

“Zoey doesn’t have any experience,” Marilyn quickly responds, preempting my excitement. “I’ve watched her practice, and her dancing looks mechanical. This is no time to be learning on the job.”

Daddy shakes his head emphatically. “No, this is no time for one of you ‘experienced’ girls to zone out like robots. Kids cue in on real enthusiasm, and nobody beats Zoey on enthusiasm, and she’s been practicing for this moment her whole life. Besides, rumor is that the Wayne kid likes redheads.”

They both look at me to determine if I’m ready, and I’m simultaneously bursting and terrified.

“Just go with it kid,” Daddy says calmly. “I've seen you practicing, and you're a natural. Make his fantasy your fantasy, then show him how you feel, and you’ll blow him away.”

I bite my lip as I look back at Marilyn, nearly begging her with my eyes.

She sighs and advises. “Don’t let your feelings get away with you, Zoey. If you feel nervous, he’ll sense it.”

I frown. They gave me contradictory advice, and telling me not to be nervous was the worst kind of encouragement.

Daddy sees my anxiety and reaches for a bottle of whiskey. “Here, honey, maybe now is a good time for your first real drink.”

I recoil. I’ve sampled some of the drinks I’ve served, and that whiskey is terrible. I have a much better idea: I grab the glass of wine Frank had spiked with ecstasy, and I down it in two gulps. Just what the doctor ordered for anxiety.

Then I lean forward and kiss Daddy on the cheek. “Thanks, Daddy. I won’t let you down,” I say effervescently.

“I know you won’t,” he says with affection, then he looks across the room at his assistant and barks out, “Hey, get a note from the city. We won’t make shit if the prima donna can’t drink.”

I skip across the club and toss my fake glasses in the air, not caring where they land. I feel like I’m playing a game while everyone else is hard at work around me.

***

I whisk into the dressing room to find Samantha touching up her make-up, getting ready for her next set in the rotation on stage. She glimpses me through the mirror and asks, “Hi Zoey, what’s up?”

I smile and bounce a little on my toes, like a little girl being told she is getting a pony, and I say, “Daddy’s letting me dance!”

Samantha’s eyes pop wide open in surprise. She looks uneasy, and I think she’s upset, but then she reaches out to hug me, saying, “Congratulations! I know you’ve wanted this since … well, just congratulations.”

“Thank you,” I reply sincerely.

“Are you starting after my set?” She asks.

I hesitate because frankly, I haven’t a clue. I don’t know when Wayne will arrive, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to go out after that or wait a bit. I only know that it happens soon.

I don’t need to answer Samantha’s question, because Sandy barges through the door and stares at me with barely disguised venom. “Congratulations,” she says, except her tone is dripping with resentment. “You’d better not screw this up because we’re all expecting our part of the kitty.”

“What are you talking about?” Samantha asks.

“The biggest whale in town is parking outside right now, and Joe wants to catch him with this guppy for bait,” Sandy spits out, then glares at me. “It’s so fucking unfair. We all deserve a piece of this catch.”

I back away from Sandy until my ass bumps into the counter. Sandy was always so nice to me that I can’t believe she’s talking to me like this. I stupidly mutter, “Of course… I know girls always share some of our tips.”

Now Samantha jumps on me from the other side, suddenly looking as intense as Sandy. “No, not like you give a little here and there. Everyone gets the same share today.”

I’m feeling really small and frightened, now. I forget everything I learned about confrontations at the dojo. I never expected to need to use those skills against my sisters. “Oh, OK,” I say desperately. “I don’t even care about the money. I just want to get out there and strip.”

My sisters look at each other with amused expressions, as though what I said made no sense. Or maybe it was the single most naïve thing ever spoken in a strip club. But they quickly calm down and back away.

Sandy looks like she’s going to apologize, but instead simply says, “Well, OK, then. Let’s make sure you are ready for this, then. You can’t go out there dressed like that.” She rifles through a pile of clothes, but there is not much to find. Most girls only bring one or two costumes per night, and they were not going to give me one of theirs. After a quick fruitless search, her resentment starts to seep in again, and she simply says, “I’m sure you can find something usable in here.” Then she storms out of the room.

Samantha is more willing to help. “If you have any music, you should give it to Peter, or just tell him if you want a fast or slow set. He’s got good taste. I’ve got to get ready myself, though, because I think I’m still supposed to go on stage.”

I nod and thank her. She smiles back, no longer upset, as she steps out of the door and backstage to the dance floor.

I was feeling really good until this confrontation, but now I feel nervous as hell, realizing suddenly that so many in the club are relying on me – and resenting me. I had always thought of the other girls as my sisters, and I guess now I know what sibling rivalry feels like.

I want to call the whole thing off. Maybe Marilyn is right, and I’m not ready for this.

I need to calm down.

When is that shit Frank spiked the wine with supposed to kick in? Or at least the alcohol?

I peek out of the dressing room, and I see a very young man enter the club with a much older man. A bouncer is checking his ID, and they appear to be joking around. If that is Bruce Wayne, he looks like a boy, not a man. He doesn’t look much older than me.

I close the door and take a deep breath, trying to relax. This is Mr. Wayne’s first time in a strip club, I remind myself. He’s probably feeling as anxious and excited as me, and he probably won’t even notice if I screw something up.

I hear the loudspeaker introducing Samantha to the stage. I wonder how long before Mr. Wayne sits down. I am sure that Samantha will get first crack at him.

I peek out again and see that Daddy and Marilyn are leading Mr. Wayne to the bar and I sigh. Are they saving him for me?

I close the door yet again and promise myself, no more peeking. I need to prepare for my first set, ever. I check the pile of clothes that Cindy was searching through and see why she gave up so quickly; there are two broken bikini tops, a plus-sized skirt and the ugliest shoes I might ever see. I think for a moment about running to my apartment upstairs and raiding Marilyn’s wardrobe, since we are nearly the same size, but I imagine myself suddenly being called to the stage before I can find anything. I don’t need that kind of stress.

I look at myself in the mirror, expecting to see a hopelessly unready girl. But I relax because I actually look pretty good. I think about adding some eyeshadow and maybe some brighter lipstick, but I stop. I never wore much makeup, and nobody commented on that before. Why gamble?

Cindy said that I could never dance with what I was wearing, but why not? It looks really cute to me, and I only see one problem with it: If I strip in the usual way, I’d be removing the cutest part of my outfit first. The mesh tunic was like a colorful fishnet covering me from my shoulders to the bottom of my bikini. To take my bikini top off, I’d need to remove the tunic first, and dance the second song with the full boring white bikini, no nudity. Where was the fun in that?

Samantha starts her third and final song on stage before I finally consider the obvious solution: Simply discard the bikini top, and do everything in reverse! I pull the tunic over my head, careful not to mess up my hair. I slip out of the bikini top and shimmy the tunic back into place. Now, when I look in the mirror, it’s like a revelation. The tunic stretches out over my perky boobs. My nipples are barely visible in dim light, unless I stretch out my arms, and then my nipples look like they are going to burst between the gaps.  It feels sexy, the way it rubs against my skin. It looks sexy, too, but the best part is that I know Mr. Wayne won’t be satisfied until the tunic comes completely off. It’s perfect!

Of course, my work shoes have to go, and I don’t have any decent heels in the club, but that’s not a problem at all: I’ll just go barefoot. Plenty of girls have done that before, and my outfit doesn’t look sleek enough for high heels, anyway.

Before I forget, I rush out of the dressing room and into the kitchen area, where our DJ hangs out between songs. I quickly tell him that I am going on stage, and ask him to please play something slow, romantic and new. No oldies.  “I trust you,” I say and smile, because I can see by his face that my outfit excites him. That’s saying a lot for a man who sees strippers every day!

His excitement excites me, and I don’t need the extra heat, which seems to be growing really fast.

Now, I’m ready to go! If Mr. Wayne is not into this, then he’d never be into me, anyway.

***

I only wait about a minute backstage for Samantha to wrap up her set, but it feels like much longer. Time seems to move so slowly, now.

I’m not feeling at all like I expected to. My body is aching, burning, and I can’t stand still. Just imagining all of those eyes watching me strip is turning me into one horny bitch! Is that the drug taking over, or am I a bigger exhibitionist than I even thought? I never felt this hot before, not even after watching porn. The truth is that while I’ve always been fascinated by sex games, I was never a girl who was easily aroused. But now, anticipating all of these men drooling over my naked body, I have a strong urge to lie down and masturbate, but I don’t have any time left.

Samantha finishes her set and hurries off the stage, looking frustrated. “Good luck with that one,” she says as she walks past. “I wonder if he even likes girls.”

That’s not a good sign, but surprisingly I don’t care because I urgently need to get out there.

I hear a few quiet musical notes that I don’t recognize immediately, and then I hear Peter’s generic DJ voice blast throughout the club, saying, “Now for the first time here or on any stage, please welcome the sweet young thing, Zoey!”

That’s my cue, and it’s a thrill just to hear my name being called out, but I have to wait a moment before making my entrance. I need to know what song I’m dancing to.

Finally, I recognize it. “Black Magic Woman.”

What is Peter thinking? This is about as old a song as we ever play in the club, and my first impression is that it doesn’t suit me. But it is slow. And sexy.

Very sexy.

I start moving my legs and arms until I get the rhythm, then I step onto the stage in an almost ballet dance that would have been impossible in heels. Now that I’m in the groove, I think this song is perfect, because it lets me dance and gyrate like a liquid as I take in everything. I stretch my arms, feeling the crochet thread rub over my hardening nipples which bounce from one gap to another.

Maybe drinking that wine was a bad idea. I’m so caught up in the sensations saturating my body, I almost forget why I was sent on the stage in the first place.

When I look around, I’m surprised to see eager faces at every seat around the tip rail, and other patrons are pulling up chairs to form a second row. I didn’t realize that the club was this full today. Dollar bills are tumbling over the edge as more bills pile on.

All of this attention for my first show!  A few of these men have been waiting years for this moment, and I won’t think badly of them for that.

But conspicuously in one corner sat Bruce, looking miserable by himself. Either some space had been cleared out for him, or nobody felt comfortable sitting next him, so amidst the rambunctious crowd of voyeurs, drunkards and partiers, he sat alone, and he hadn’t anteed up anything for the game. Still, I saunter by him first, displaying my goods like a runway model, hoping to coax a little interest, but he seems distant, so I move onto other men who have evident interest, as any good stripper would do.  I know this rich boy is the reason I got to dance in the first place, but I’m not going to squander my one chance to prove I belong on stage.

Eyes lock on me from every other direction, and it disturbs my equilibrium. I’m losing my rhythm with Santana’s flowing seduction song, as my heart synchronizes with the hearts around me.

I don’t know where all of this heat is coming from. My pussy feels smothered, and I want to undress now, but I hold back. It’s not time, yet. I must respect the rules of the seduction.

The first song is foreplay.

I should go to the pole. I should climb it. I should play with it.

But then nobody would see how hard my nipples are, erupting through the tunic.

None of these men would see that I wanted their heart as much as they wanted mine.

I decide to get personal. I crawl around the cross-shaped stage like a stalking cat. I ignore the money offered up to me and gaze into each man’s eyes in turn. Big Ed is a kind soul, but he looks carnivorous tonight. Jack clearly has a kink for my tunic. For the first time ever, Ozzy looks interested in me. Slim has a big fatty for my face, so I blow him a kiss. Kevin brought his girlfriend, and they both seem totally into me; I crawl past them quickly, in case they are planning to propose a three-way. They have to share me with everyone.

But when I get back to Bruce, I don’t sense any interest at all. In fact, he looks angry at me, as though he’s wishing I was someone else. His anger makes me feel unbalanced and defensive, so I take a step back, but then he raises an eyebrow and inches forward. A hint of interest? Maybe he regrets frightening me.  I realize that he is a bad bet and that I should move on, but I’m feeling very unprofessional right now. I always had a soft spot for grouches. I reach over the rail to touch Bruce’s hand, pausing for permission. Surprisingly, he reaches forward and lets me touch him.

I whisper, “You look sad. Can I help?”

He glances down and says, “I don’t think so.”

“I’m sorry, I won’t bother you, anymore,” I say with a practiced pout. My instinct is to stay with him and charm his sob story out of him, like I did every day with sad men at the bar, but my responsibility on stage is to attend to everyone. More to the point, I needed to attend to the carnal appetite building inside of me.

Finally, the first song of my set fades to an end, and I can stop playing around.

Before the second song even starts, I trot to the middle of the stage and abruptly drop to my knees, pushing my bikini bottom down as I fall. A few seconds of silence follows, and I close my eyes, relishing this moment.

But I don’t feel relief. Momentum is picking up, as the song “Sex and Candy” tells my body how to move.

The hem of my tunic partially covers my pussy and ass, as I grab the pole and walk around for two orbits, smiling when I see the row of men ducking down for a better view.

But I don’t tease them for long.

Uncle Jervis tosses a twenty onto the stage, demanding some special attention. He has known me since I was five and can be a little creepy with his intense eyes, which are all over me now. As of this moment, I am stripping him of his "uncle" status.

But I don’t begrudge him his perversions. Who am I to judge? If I'm not ashamed, why should he be? I meet his gaze with an impassioned gaze of my own, as I move in close. I drop to my knees, looking him in the eyes, but he won’t look back, anymore. He wants to see my body, so I turn about, showing him my ass up close. Then I roll onto my back and spread my legs. Still, he won’t look in my eyes. Maybe that's for the best. Instead, he stares like a laser at my pussy, hypnotized by how wet I am. He is surrounded by friends who all appear impressed by the moment he has purchased. I let them all get their fill, but I look away in disappointment. I have known many of these men for years, and I'm not sure I can't look at them the same way again.

I feel like the drug is fading from my system. Time is speeding up.

I look across the bar towards Bruce. Then I blink. What am I seeing?

On the tip rail he has folded a single bill, but on that bill I think I see four digits in the corner. That’s impossible! I blink again, but the bill still looks the same.

Abruptly, I turn away from the swarm of regulars and crawl my way over to Bruce. I sit on the floor a few inches away and pick up the strange bill, which indicates $1000, and it looks quite old.

“Is this real?” I ask while shifting my position so he can see whatever turns him on, but he’s still looking in my eyes.

He nods. “It’s very old, but still real currency.”

I smile, and he smiles back, looking much more friendly now. I strike a few poses, but he’s still looking me in the eyes, and I blush. Did he really just pay $1000 to look into a pretty girl’s eyes?

I feel I must remind him that I’m his fantasy, not his lover. I spread my legs and close my eyes to break his focus. Then I sweep my hands down my body to guide his eyes to what he should be thinking of as his prize.

When I open my eyes again, sure enough, he regards my pussy like it’s the one thing he’s been searching for his whole life. I smile and feel that heat rush through my body again. I haven’t solved anything. An ache fills my heart. He looks cute in his black suit and sharp haircut. Our perversions feel like romance. The lust in his eyes and the wetness between my legs feel like a kind of love. I don’t know how much I can blame these delusions on the mysterious elixir.

Sex and Candy changes to Closer by Nine-Inch Nails.

Oh, Peter, you’re a genius!

I rise to my knees and slowly pull my tunic up my body. My tits rise and fall with a delicious bounce, and now I’m completely naked. I spread my arms and gaze up at the red overhead lights, and I smile, feeling liberated, not just from my clothing but also from everything that has kept me from my dreams until now.

Mr. Wayne reaches towards me and drops several more of those old bills onto the stage.

I frown slightly, feeling that I let this go too far. “I don’t know what you want from me, Mr. Wayne.”

He shakes his head and talks over the music. “Nothing, you just made me feel better, and that’s worth a lot to me.”

I smile again and say, “Well, sir, if you want me, I’m all yours for the rest of the night.”

He nods and says magically, “You are beautiful.”

I pause for a moment because those words wrap around my heart, and my emotions are changing from a river to a waterfall. In an instant, I am in love with Bruce Wayne, and I want to share everything with him.

I let my fingers roam between my legs, and his eyes wander back and forth from my eyes to my sex.

I want to come for him, right here, on stage. He’s paying more than anyone has ever paid for a stripper in the Kindling Club, I’m sure of it. I want for him to get his money’s worth, if that is even possible, and so much more.

I slide my fingers over my clit. Up and down.

I feel so aware of everything. I can hear my heartbeat, which seems to have slowed down dangerously.

When I dip my finger inside, I can see a drop of Bruce’s sweat fall from his face in slow motion. I never knew I could feel this desperately hot!

Then when I stretch my hole, my chest convulses, because I have arrived. I never knew I could come this hard!

I try to keep eye contact with Bruce, with my prince, as jolts reverberate through my body and my eyes shrink into wet slits. Before the sensation subsides, I’m coming again.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Daddy and Marilyn watching on from fifteen feet away. They smile with a sense of pride that no normal family would ever understand, watching their daughter orgasming for the sake of a stranger—a rich stranger whose desire for me could make up for a week of poor profits.

Any anxieties I might have had are now gone, and I could not feel happier.

Time nearly stops as I come again and again in waves. Pleasure sweeps over my body as though it had been injected into my veins. It feels too good to be true.

I see explosions of light. I feel an earthquake shaking my ass. I hear a roar in my ears. This is an orgasm more intense than I ever even dreamed of having.

But it is also something else.

The shaking under my ass is real.

Time is accelerating, and like still frames in a movie, I see Daddy and Marilyn flying through the air, and I wonder if somehow I have lost my senses and am now dreaming. When I see Bruce falling off of his seat and a section of the wall crumbling, I begin to understand.

Something is ACTUALLY exploding, yet I can’t think. Spasms of pleasure are still reverberating through my body. Even as alarm bells go off in my head, I’m still caught in this intense orgasm.

I try to sit up, but I’m moving so slowly that I can duck under a brick that is flying straight towards me.

I manage to climb from my hands and knees to my feet, only to see bullets now flying into the club, with shadows approaching from behind them.

It’s dawning on me that a horrible attack is occurring right now, but I’m just standing here, coming down from one orgasm, and just beginning a third. I look around for Daddy and Marilyn, and now my feelings explode in impossible directions when I see the two people I love the most lying on the floor in a horribly shaped heap.

The feeling of frustration now overwhelms my other feelings, as I try to scream but feel nothing coming out.

Amidst this suffering, those shadows are getting closer, and I see one of the bullets coming at me in slow motion but too quickly for me to avoid getting hit in the arm. My body is still so overwhelmed with sexual confusion that my arm explodes in pleasure instead of pain as the bullet passes through.

The approaching shadows have now morphed into two large men rushing into the club, looking for someone to shoot. Both men wear smiley face masks.

All of my mounting grief and pleasure and frustration merge into a new emotion: anger. I step off the stage, landing beside Bruce, who lays prone on the floor.

Time is starting to speed up now, and I see the invaders raise their guns and press down on the triggers, apparently to fire indiscriminately into the club.

I jump in front of them and nail one of them with a karate chop to the throat, and I hit the other with an elbow to the cheek.  Everything feels like it’s happening in slow motion, but when I hit them, the impact is so hard, I feel a sharp pain in the hand and in the elbow that I struck them with. Both men crumple as if hit by a heavyweight boxer instead of a girl barely topping 100 pounds.

The wall near the entrance to the club is completely demolished now. Beyond this hole, I can see a third man standing by a car under the lights of the parking lot. He is wearing the same smiley face mask and holding a spent rocket launcher. When he sees his conspirators fall, he jumps in his car and starts the engine.

I want to stop him, but I feel time speeding up, and the reality of what has happened is sinking in. All of the fear and pain come at once. I let out a loud scream and fall to my knees, crying.

I feel like I’m there, alone, for a long time.

Then I feel a coat being wrapped around my naked body, followed by an embrace. I look up into Bruce’s kind eyes. Behind Bruce stands the same old guy who stood behind him in the club.

“Are you hurt?” Bruce asks while opening the coat to shamelessly examine my body.

I lift my arm out of the coat, to show him where I was shot, but I’m confused to see a nearly healed scar where the wound should be.  The pain in my hand and elbow are strangely gone now, too.

A few of my sisters and some regulars are now climbing from the rubble, and then I remember how I saw Daddy and Marilyn being thrown to the ground by the explosion.

I stumble away from Bruce and look into the shadows inside of the building. I find a few bodies in a pile. I push Frank’s body aside and put my hand over my mouth when I see that a brick has completely crushed the side of Daddy’s head, and Marilyn is not moving.

I can’t breathe.

Bruce’s hands grab at me, trying to calm me, but I fall out of his arms. My muscles give up, and my vision fades. Then all is black.


	2. Emergency Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zoey didn’t know what she had, until she was about to lose it all.

The next thing I know, I am waking up to a strange man groping my breasts.  
  
I don’t remember having dreams, though I awake with a start, sweating and heart pounding. I don’t remember anything at all for a moment, and I have no idea why I’m in an ambulance.  
  
“What the fuck,” I mutter as the paramedic quickly slides his hand from my nipple to an electrode taped over my heart. I take in my surroundings gradually as consciousness returns. The ambulance is driving with no siren, and I’m laying on a stretcher with my hands strapped to my side, and the only thing I am wearing is a man’s jacket with a silk lining. The jacket is completely open such that all of my goods are on display to the paramedic who is fussing over me. My hands are strapped to my side. The circumstances suggest that he is merely checking on my health, but my pussy is wet and hungry, telling me that things aren’t what they seem.  
  
“Oh, you are awake … good,” he says, quickly closing the jacket and holding it shut because the buttons are broken off – that fact does not ease my suspicions. “You fainted. I was just checking your heart.”  
  
“How was it?” I ask with an accusing smile that probably comes across as flirty – a natural consequence of my upbringing.  
  
"A bit fast,” he says, now more professionally.  
  
I blink, as the moment starts to hit me. This is much bigger than a man sneaking a touch. I’m in an ambulance. Something went wrong. Very wrong. My mind may be foggy, but I know that much.  
  
“What happened?” I ask nervously, but suddenly the memories start flooding back.  
  
“You were involved in an explosion,” he replies. “But you seem fine. I can’t find any injuries or physical problems. I think you just fainted.”  
  
“What happened to Daddy and Marilyn?” I ask suddenly, as a snapshot appears suddenly before my mind’s eye of the two people I care most about lying motionless on the ground.  
  
“We’ll be at the hospital in a minute,” he says, as he starts loosening the straps on my arms. “They’ll fill you in there.”  
  
“No, please!” I urgently insist, as the memory becomes clearer. “Are they … dead?”  
  
He doesn’t look at me when he says, “We found three men, all deceased at the scene, and two injured women, one of whom is probably already in the hospital.”  
  
It feels like a puzzle that I’m in no mental state to put together. Three men? I know one of them is Daddy. They don’t need to tell me that, and I don’t care who the fuck the other two men are. But … if the women are all alive, then Marilyn must be alive. I feel dizzy. I don’t know how to process the sudden horror and relief at the same time. But my eyes show no such confusion, as the tears unload.  
  
“We’re here,” the paramedic says as the ambulance comes to a stop, and the back doors swing open. Two men quickly grab the stretcher and pull it out and set it on the ground. They intend to push me inside the hospital, riding on the stretcher, but I see Bruce standing just beyond the door in the ER, and I jump off the stretcher and run to him.  
  
The paramedics are surprised, but they do nothing to stop me.  
  
Bruce is surprised, too, as I leap into his arms and cling like he was my closest friend during this tragic moment.  
  
In reality, we don’t know each other at all. We merely shared the shallowest of moments a short time ago. He was a rich, handsome boy who I hypnotized for a moment, and I was just a drugged up nympho caught up in a role.  
  
He pushes me back for a moment, and I’m waiting for him to set me straight. He’s looking right at my chest and says matter-of-factly: “You are still wearing my jacket.”

I don’t remember when he put the jacket on me, so I feel confused, and now that jacket is swinging open. Does he want me to give his jacket back to him? Now?  
  
Instead, he pulls the jacket closed and puts his arms around me. He says way too politely: “That was terrible back there, but I’m glad to see you are awake again, Miss.”  
  
Miss? He didn’t remember my name even after the DJ blasted it over the loudspeaker? No, of course, he didn’t, what did I expect? Why the fuck am I disappointed? This should be the last thing on my mind, but still I say, “Zoey. My name is Zoey.”  
  
“Oh, so that’s your real name,” he says, and I hug him tighter. He DID remember. He guides me towards a receptionist. “I saw them bring a few dancers in here a few minutes ago. If you’d like, I’ll wait here with you.”  
  
I nod thankfully.  
  
The receptionist asks me a few questions about myself, then she asks, “Are you here to visit Marilyn Caruso? Is she your sister?”  
  
“Yeah,” I reply, then hesitate. “Actually, she’s my mother. But her last name isn’t Caruso.”  
  
The receptionist looks at me curiously and says, “That’s what it says on her ID. Anyway, you can take a seat over there. We’ll let you know when there is an update on your mother’s condition.”  
  
I wonder why Marilyn’s ID would have the wrong name. Did Daddy help her get a fake ID, just like he had done for me? Why would he do that?  
  
Bruce guides me to a seat, holding my shoulders as though I was a fragile thing, and he sits beside me.  
  
The waiting room is mostly full, and I’m catching a lot of attention. I’m still naked under Bruce’s jacket, and since the jacket has no buttons I need to be careful to hide that fact while I’m sitting. Obviously, I’m not shy, but I’m feeling vulnerable right now, and this is not the right time to be flashing people. Even worse, my body doesn’t seem to care. The thought of exposing myself here makes my heart beat faster and gets my juices flowing. My feelings are so wrong that I want to puke, which is usually a sure sexual turn off. But not with this drug, apparently. I’m wondering when it will finally wear off.  
  
Fortunately, a nurse sees my situation, and she hands me a blanket and hospital slippers. I thank her. I use half of the blanket for cover, and the other half I hold to my chest like a child with her security blanket. Now that the chaos appears to have settled around me, I can finally feel the trauma that life has dealt me.  
  
“How are you feeling?” Bruce asks, as he presses close to me on the bench seat.  
  
All I hear in his voice is sympathy. I look in his eyes, but I don’t say anything. I don’t know how to feel. I’m being torn by understandable grief and unforgivable passion, and I’m hoping he won’t hold it against me if he finds out. But I hold it against myself. My heart should be focused on Daddy’s death and worrying about Marilyn’s condition. Instead, I’m imagining his hands under my clothes, and I shift my position, hoping to feel if he’s still excited by me.  
  
“It’s OK, you don’t have to talk,” he continues, then looks off into the distance, beyond the walls. “I think I know how you feel. I lost my parents a couple of years ago. It’s a dark part of my life I’ll never be over, but I keep looking for something to hold on to. Your mom is still alive. She’s fighting in there, and if she’s as strong as you are, I know she’ll make it.”  
  
“I’m not strong,” I mutter, feeling ashamed that he has any faith in me.  
  
“That’s not what I saw at the club,” he says reassuringly.  
  
“What?” I reply with frustration that he doesn’t get me at all. “I was just doing the only thing I know how to do, what I’ve always wanted to do. I was born to take my clothes off. That doesn’t make me strong.”  
  
“No, no, not that,” Bruce replies. “Don’t you remember? I’m talking about what you did with those thugs outside after the attack.”  
  
I look at him blankly. I don’t remember anything after the explosion.  
  
“You didn’t freeze,” Bruce explains with admiration. “You leveled two large men, each of them at least twice your size. They were huge, and you are, what, five feet tall?”  
  
“I’m five foot one,” I instinctively correct him, betraying a sensitivity about my height, but now the moment is coming back to me, and my anger starts to focus. “Who were the men? Are they in jail?”  
  
“Gordon arrested them, thanks to you,” Bruce reassured, “but they were thugs for hire. Somebody ordered this hit, and they aren’t talking.”  
  
“Oh,” I say, and I clench my teeth, embracing the anger, which feels more appropriate than the other feelings bothering my body.  
  
But then Bruce seems determined to comfort me, holding me close, kissing my hair and whispering over and over, “Everything will be okay.”  
  
His hand is resting on my thigh, unsteady. I don’t know what to do with it.  
  
Shame loses out to desire, and I urge his hand up my thigh, under the jacket. I stop only an inch or two away, wanting him to complete the journey into the damp warmth ahead.  
  
I can feel the pressure in his pants now. We look into each other’s eyes. Both of us nervous. Both of us inexperienced. Both of us wanting. Both of us hesitating at this most delicate moment.  
  
Then he says, “Shouldn’t you be thinking of your mother right now?”  
  
The power that drug has over me disintegrates at those words. I cover my mouth with my hand and shame floods back into my eyes.

I don't know what's wrong with me. It's like everything I feel is magnified beyond my control.  
  
Bruce looks away in disgust. I’m not sure if he feels that way about me or about himself and his own feelings.  
  
“There you are, sir.” comes the voice of a much older man, interrupting this horrible moment. “And … you are with … her. Good evening, Miss.”  
  
“Alfred, this is Zoey Caruso” Bruce says calmly, shaking off what just was, and we both adjust our clothes. “Her mother is fighting for her life in here somewhere.”  
  
“I’m so sorry, Miss Caruso,” he says sincerely to me, then looks back to Bruce. “We may need to stay here for a while. The press is everywhere.”  
  
“I’m not leaving until we know more about Zoey’s mom,” Bruce says firmly, reassuringly.  
  
I needed to hear that. I swing my arms around him and bury my face into his chest.  
  
“Of course, sir,” Alfred says pleasantly, but with just a hint of disapproval.  
  
As if on cue, a doctor walks up behind Alfred, calling out, “Zoey Caruso?”  
  
I stand up quickly, nodding. My heart leaps forward. I don’t feel ready for this.  
  
The doctor sees my reaction and raises his hand to calm me. “Your mother is alive and resting comfortably. But I’m afraid she still has a serious condition. A CAT scan has revealed that she has some internal bleeding and an aortic dissection which will need surgery in the next hour or two, while we assemble a surgical team. We’ve had success with similar procedures in the past, but if she has any other local family, now would be a good time to contact them.”  
  
A shiver runs through my spine. If that was the best the doctor could do to boost my confidence, then I know I should be very worried. Finally, I ask, “Can… I see her?”  
  
“Yes, but not for very long. Not more than thirty minutes. We will need to prep her for surgery soon.”  
  
He leads us down two halls, and as we approach her room, I can hear another doctor explaining to Marilyn the details of the procedure they are preparing to perform.  
  
When we walk through the door, I see IV cords attached to her arms like cables attached to a home stereo. I am surprised how old she looks suddenly, with her mascara running from her eyes and pain relievers sapping her energy. Worry is etched into her face, but when she sees me, she raises a hand to stop the doctor’s extended string of worrisome words and smiles at me reassuringly.  
  
She is putting all of her own worries aside to make me feel better, and I then I know the depths of my love for her, and the depths of her love for me. I also feel sure now that she is about to die.  
  
“Mom!” I cry, hurrying towards Marilyn, wanting to hug her, but instead I grab her hand – the one that is not draped in IV cables.  
  
“I’ll be fine,” she lies, but with truer affection than I ever heard from her. Then she smiles and says approvingly, “Looks like you’ve made a new friend.”  
  
I glance at Bruce, who stands attentive and somber by my side. I smile back at her and nod. I don’t know if Bruce will even care about me tomorrow, but if it makes her feel better, I won’t deny her what might be her last wish.  
  
Just then, I see a new person appear at the doorway. He’s standing back, urging us to continue our urgent dialog, but I stare at him as though he might have been responsible for everything bad that had happened.  
  
When it remains quiet for an uncomfortably long time, he steps forward and says, “Hello, ladies, I’m James Gordon from the GCPD, working with my detectives to uncover who is responsible for this tragedy at the Kindling Club. I won’t take much of your time, but I have a couple of questions I need to ask while the event is fresh in your memories.”  
  
Marilyn frowns impatiently. “I don’t remember anything at all. I think I was unconscious as soon as the explosion occurred.”  
  
The policeman nods and continues, “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt you or hurt anyone else at the club?”  
  
Marilyn shakes her head.  
  
“Did anything unusual happen before the explosion?” he presses on.  
  
She continues shaking her head, but points at Bruce, saying, “Only that this man came into the club looking for a good time, and my daughter gave it to him.”  
  
Bruce and I look at each other, suddenly feeling ashamed.  
  
Gordon now looks at Bruce, asking, “How is it that you were there today, Bruce? Do you have any insights about what might have happened.”  
  
Bruce shakes his head. “I was just celebrating my birthday. I was feeling disgusted by the scene at Sirens club and wanted to try something different. Nothing seemed strange when I got to the strip club, except that Penguin was sitting at a table with one of the dancers, but I figured he was only having a good time like everyone else.”  
  
Mr. Gordon pauses thoughtfully, then asks, “Does that seem odd to you?”  
  
Bruce shrugs, “Probably no odder than I must have seemed to him when he noticed me.”  
  
Mr. Gordon then looks at me, “Your name is Zoey, right? You were the dancer? According to a few witnesses, you jumped off the stage and attacked the thugs as they attempted to shoot up the place. What made you do that?”  
  
I swallow, and I try to forget everything that is happening right now and remember that moment. “I don’t know, sir. I remember seeing shit flying everywhere and Marilyn and Daddy lying on the ground, and then I freaked out when I saw those men running in. I just ran at them and started punching.”  
  
“Hell of a punch you have there, young lady,” he said, impressed. “But you said ‘Daddy’. Who is your daddy? Is he the owner?”  
  
I shake my head, and I can barely speak as my tears have lodged in my throat. “Yes, but no, he’s not really my father. He’s like the father of all of us girls at the club… I mean, he was like our father.”  
  
“No, he is her father,” Marilyn interrupts me. I assume she’s is just refusing to admit the lie that Daddy had been telling to the IRS for tax purposes, but then she adds. “You need to know this now, Zoey, before it’s too late. Joe really was your father.”  
  
All I can do is blink and shake my head and ask, “What?”  
  
Marilyn swallows. “There is more, and I hope you won’t hate us for this, but I am not only your mother. I’m also your sister.”  
  
I shrug, saying, “I know that.”  
  
“No!” she insists. “I really am your sister, because Joe is my father, too. That is why your grandmother wanted for me to have an abortion. She had refused to tell me who my father was when I was growing up, but I found out, and Joe didn’t even know, and I was too young and stupid.”  
  
My mind goes blank. I can’t process this now.  
  
Marilyn continues, “I know I screwed up big time, and I’m really, really sorry, but when you were a baby, you were so beautiful and perfect, I swore that I would protect you and never tell you the truth. But now, I don’t know, at least for your father’s memory, you should know the truth of what he really was to you.”  
  
My tears are out of control so I can barely see. The magnitude of the loss is only now hitting me: Daddy wasn't merely the adorable grouch who took me in, fed me and protected me. He was also my REAL father, and I can never talk to him about this. I can never say goodbye.  
  
The machines around me are starting to make odd sounds, and two doctors walk urgently into the room. “It’s time, Ms Caruso. We need to prepare for the operation now.”  
  
Marilyn’s eyes dart around frantically in surprise, because time ran out faster than expected.  
  
I kiss her on the forehead. “I love you, mom,” I say, suddenly upset that we didn’t say that nearly enough.  
  
“I love you, Zoey,” she replies as the doctors disengage her stretcher from one of the machines, and, too quickly, they start rolling her into the hall.  
  
* * *  
  
Mr. Gordon asks Bruce and me several more questions, but we don’t have much more useful information to add, so he wishs us the best and begins to search for clues elsewhere.  
  
Bruce, true to his word, does not leave my side in the waiting room.  
  
Almost like clockwork, we receive about one update per hour on the progress of the operation.  
  
First, we are told that my mom survived long enough to begin the operation, which I had never thought was in question.  
  
Next, we are told that her internal bleeding is more extensive than expected, but they have it under control. I am sure that their next communication will be the one I dread.  
  
Bruce doesn’t let me dwell on that worry. He asks me about my life and my mother, trying to draw out my happier memories.  
  
Then, I sigh in relief when the doctors tell us that the most critical part of the operation was a success. They warn me against being too optimistic, and that further work is needed, but I was so certain that she would be gone by now, I can’t heed their advice. I collapse against Bruce in an exhausted heap.  
  
He is still wide awake, holding my head while I lay on his lap. After several minutes, I feel movement of his dick against my neck.  
  
Then I remember that I’m still only wearing his unsecured jacket and nothing else. The waiting room is empty, except for Bruce and me, and the air is warm, so the blanket I was using to cover myself has fallen to the side of the bench seat. It occurs to me that I might not be completely decent.  
  
Now, I’m feeling that heat again, on my skin and between my legs. I thought that drug had finally vacated my body, but it has returned. If I wasn’t so tired, I would be cursing myself again for letting these feelings rise at such an inappropriate time, but my body is too drained to be excited by either the urges or the shame.  
  
But I can feel that Bruce is having a more difficult time with those feelings. He wants to talk while I want to sleep.  
  
He’s building a theory of who is responsible for the attack, and even as tired as I am, the triumvirate attack of worry, lust and curiosity won’t let me sleep. So, I shift about and listen to his thoughts.  
  
“This town is crawling with bad actors with bad motives, so Gordon will have his work cut out for him,” He says, while rubbing my thigh up near the hip. “My bet is it has something to do with the Sirens club. Barbara Keen and Tabitha are trying to eliminate competition to their club, and the Kindling Club has been siphoning off dancers and customers for years. Those two would kill anyone who gets in their way. I don’t know why Selina is working with them. I thought she was better than that,” he says, his voice sounding tormented, but his hand eagerly rides under the jacket and strokes my waist. Then, suddenly, his hand withdraws, and he continues talking, more quietly now, “But Selina really had a tough life. I guess I can’t blame her. She plays at being bad, because she thinks she needs to. I … I can’t believe she could really kill a lot of innocent people. Maybe Barbara and Tabitha did it on their own.”  
  
I feel bad for Bruce, because he seems really upset about something, so I roll my body slightly, letting the jacket open for easy access. I rub his stiff dick lightly through his pants with my hand, just wanting him to feel better.  
  
For that, he shoves me off of his body and the bench, slamming both of my elbows hard on the lightly carpeted floor. I feel stunned for an instant, but I know it’s my fault. I let that drug get the better of me. “I’m sorry, Bruce. That’s not really me.”  
  
He reaches down and helps me back onto the sofa, saying, “No, Zoey, I’m sorry, I have no excuse. I think I’ve been leading you on. I’m not ready for anything like that.”  
  
I nod, reassuringly, eagerly seeking a mulligan, and when he tries to place me back on his lap, just like before, I hurry into place, and we don’t talk for a while, both of us eager to keep whatever kind of relationship we are building from careening off of a cliff.  
  
There is very little left in my life to hold onto, it seems, so I really want this.  
  
Soon after, we get another update: Nothing has changed.  
  
I don’t know how to feel. Is no change good news, or is it bad news?  
  
I fall asleep shortly after that, and when I finally wake up again, light is shining through the windows of the hospital and Bruce has fallen asleep with his neck awkwardly bent over the wooden armrest. I wake him up so he can find a more comfortable position.  
  
When the nurses see that we are awake, they give us another update: Every operation has completed successfully. Marilyn is not out of the woods; she will remain in the operating room until the surgeons feel sure that no more work needs to be done, and she will be in a medically induced coma for at least a day while her body starts to heal. But the way the doctors are talking and smiling makes me feel very optimistic, now.  
  
And there doesn’t seem to be much point in waiting at the hospital anymore.  
  
Bruce calls his butler Alfred, and shortly after a chauffeur arrives to drive him home.  
  
Bruce doesn’t even ask me what I want to do. He knows that my home is in the strip club, but he refuses to let me go back there to finish my sleep.  
  
He insists that I come home to his mansion with him, and I can sleep in one of the spare rooms. What he considers to be a spare room feels to me like a mansion in itself.  
  
When I finally lay my head down to sleep, it feels like questions are raining on top of me.

How should I feel about the family scandal my mom unloaded on me?

What does Bruce really think of me?

Who the hell are those bitches that own the Sirens club, and did they kill Daddy?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are still waiting for the mature stuff, sorry that this chapter didn't deliver much.
> 
> Chapter 3, however ...


	3. The Sirens Club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zoey sleuths around. She is not good at it.

I wake up as though jolted by electricity, heartbeat pounding, like when I woke up in the ambulance, except this time I remember everything. The explosion. My father’s body on the ground. My mother in surgery. Bruce. Everything.

I’m sitting up naked in bed. The blankets are all rolled up into a bunch, so I must have slept restlessly. My first thought is that I only slept an hour or two, because the sun is low in the sky, blasting through the windows onto my skin, but when I look to the clock on the bedside table, it reads 3:30. So it must be afternoon, already.

I hadn’t noticed how fancy this bedroom was when I crashed last night. It’s like something I’ve only seen in movies. The furniture is made from fine wood. A giant projection TV is propped within an elaborate stereo system. The bed itself looks like a piece of art.

I stand up and stretch out with a yawn. I’m feeling really good, but when I realize that, I want to cover up in shame. I have no reason to feel good right now, not after everything that has happened. I should be mourning or reminiscing or even taking a stab at praying. That is what good people do after a tragedy like this, right? Instead, I had spent all of last night fantasizing about sex with the kind guy who wanted to help me, or of masturbating in the hospital.

After taking an inventory of my feelings, though, I don’t feel those urges now, and I sigh in relief. That drug must finally have worn off.

I hear a loud knocking on the bedroom door.

“Hello, Miss?” I heard Bruce’s butler call out. “Are you awake?”

“Yes,” I reply, then look around frantically for Bruce’s jacket. “But I’m naked. I don’t know where the jacket is.”

“Look through the closet,” Alfred replies. “We’ve accommodated quite a few lady visitors over the years, and I’m sure you’ll find something in there you can wear.”

“Okay. Do... Have you heard anything about my mother?”

“Nothing new yet, Miss, which is a good sign,” he encourages. “They know to reach you here, and you can call whenever you like, but I don’t expect we’ll hear anything new until they wake her from her sleep tomorrow. For now, might I suggest taking a shower, and when you are ready, meet me in the dining room.”

“Okay,” I reply meekly, and I hear his footsteps echo as he walks away.

I look around and find a small door to the bathroom, which is not impressive for a place like Wayne Manor, except for the fact that it is attached to the bedroom. This place must have a dozen bathrooms, but this one is very small, featuring only a standard toilet, sink and a stand-up shower.

I am much more impressed when I open the closet, which is as large as my whole bedroom at the Kindling Club. The variety of clothes is limited though, essentially coming in three sizes. I find several flowery dresses that are much too big for me. Some of the sexy gowns are closer to my size, but when I try them on, they are too loose to be appealing. Then I find several black jackets, shirts and pants that are not my style at all, but they fit me perfectly.

I can’t find any underwear in the closet or any of the bureaus in the bedroom. I guess I’m the first person to come here with no underwear on hand.

I squeeze into a stretchy black tank top and black latex pants.

I find a few pairs of shoes, but the only footwear that fits me are dark boots with one-inch heels. At least these match the outfit I’m wearing.

I don’t have any expectation when I finally look in the mirror. I never thought black was my color, and I like to show much more skin than these clothes allow. But now I’m changing my mind. The shine of the form-fitting latex looks hot, and my pale skin glows through the black shirt almost as though it was sheer. I imagine going out in public dressed like this, and I feel myself getting excited again.

Damn, is that drug still in me? Or is it just my exhibitionist nature?

Well, I can’t meet Alfred in the dining room with my tits glowing, so I slip into a black faux leather jacket which at least covers my nipples.

I can’t do much else for my appearance. I can’t even find a comb in the bathroom, so I open the door and start searching for the dining room in the mansion.

Alfred is reading a newspaper when I finally find the place, and his eyes register surprise and barely disguised disdain when he sees me. Is it me or the clothes that he objects to? He does not tell me. He stands and says, “Alright, then. I’m sure you’re hungry after a long night and a long sleep.”

I try to win him over with a smile. It occurs to me that I haven’t eaten anything for almost an entire day, and now that I think of it, I’m starving.

“What would you like?” Alfred asks politely. “We have cereal, eggs, left-over lasagna, sushi…”

“A peanut butter sandwich?” I ask, suddenly choking up. “That’s what Marilyn used to make for me growing up,” I explain.

Alfred smiles sympathetically. “Very good. Would you like milk with that?”

I nod.

I look around the dining room while I wait, checking out various treasures laid on the mantle as though they were trinkets, but before long Alfred is back. He places my sandwich on one side of the table and some raw fish sushi for himself on the other. The table is long. He could have chosen to place the plates at the ends, but he chooses the friendlier arrangement instead, putting me at ease.

As I start to eat, I am drawn to the scent of his sushi. Then I can’t stop looking at it on his plate, on his fork, then in his mouth. I quickly forget my peanut butter, and suddenly I’m only hungry for that sushi. Which is strange, because I always hated sushi. In fact, just the thought of it was usually enough to make me nauseous. But now it makes my mouth water.

Alfred cannot help but notice my attention, and he asks, “Would you like some, Miss? We have plenty more.”

I nod with an eager smile, and I feel stupid for feeling that way, but when he brings back another plate for me, I devour the sushi like a tiger attacking her prey. I have only taken one bite of the sandwich by the time I’m done eating.

Alfred is amused.

“Where is Bruce?” I finally get around to asking. I had been expecting Bruce to walk in from another room at any moment, but now his absence seems conspicuous.

“He’s at the police station, trying to nudge those lazy bums to do their job and find out who killed your dad,” Alfred says spitefully.

I look at the ground upon the mention of Daddy. “Don’t we already know who did it? Bruce says it was someone at the Sirens Club.”

Alfred raises an eyebrow. “Did he? Well, he’s probably right. They lost a lot of business to your club when Penguin destroyed theirs, and they are having trouble now that they have rebuilt it. But the police won’t go just on motive. For those of us who are not corrupt, we need a lot of evidence if we want the police to get off of their arses.”

“Oh,” I say, understanding better why Daddy was always upset with the cops. “So, Bruce is looking for evidence against the Sirens Club?”

“God, I hope not,” he replies quickly, then looks at me with scorn. “But the way he looks at you, I doubt I could stop him.”

I inch back in my chair, stunned by his sudden hostility, and all I can utter is, “What?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, Miss, I sympathize with your loss, but the last thing Master Bruce needs is another lost girl to save, especially a stripper. He doesn’t know your type as I do.”

“My type?” I ask, feeling equally confused and upset. I now realize that his kindness so far was out of politeness, not affection.

He rolls his eyes. “Minxes like you latch onto a bank account like leeches. I don’t judge. It’s a living. But I have to look out for Master Bruce because the only girls he gravitates to are slappers and thieves.”

“Thank you for the food,” I say as politely as I can. I stand up, and I walk towards the bedroom quickly, before he can see the tears forming in my eyes.

Before I walk twenty feet, the front door swings open in front of me, and Bruce walks briskly through the door.

My anxiety eases, but only for a second, because when he sees me, he looks tormented, as though merely seeing me was causing him pain.

I cross my arms and ask, “Are you alright?”

“It’s nothing,“ Bruce says, then he looks away from me and clenches his teeth. “I can’t talk to you right now, OK?”

Then Bruce walks into the dining room and starts whispering with Alfred.

Now, I’m just standing there, not knowing what to do and wondering if I had done something wrong. I thought I was welcome there. After all, Bruce had insisted that I come home with him last night. What am I missing?

Then I remember all of the things I do without thinking. Things I learned during a lifetime among strippers. Things I like to forget.

I remember how Bruce and I met and how I did everything I could to beguile him on stage.

I remember how I ran to him at the hospital like a damsel in distress.

I remember how I rubbed against his dick in the waiting room.

Now, many hours later, no wonder the spell I had put him under is now broken.

I’m still standing near the manor entrance, looking back at the dining room, but I feel guilty for manipulating these good people and for taking everything they had to offer. Clearly, they were just taking pity on me.

I look towards the bedroom, but I have no business going there, now.

Instead, I walk out the front door, wearing only the clothes on my back, which aren’t even mine, but I need to take at least that much.

I’ll go back to the hospital, I decide, as I exit the gate to the mansion and gaze upon Gotham in the distance. It sticks out from the lush grounds of Wayne Manor like a bruise on clear skin. I will need to ask people on the streets for directions because I don’t know my way around Gotham, or even how to get there.

After walking a few miles, the sun sets, and it seems like the decent people retreat into their houses, and a tougher crowd takes their place. In the dark, everyone looks more threatening. Everyone looks like someone who could light a bomb and kill strangers.

Or maybe it just seems that way because I’ve entered The Narrows. 

I feel anxious, at first, but the more I see, the sadder I get.

This is the world Daddy had tried to protect me from. I had thought I understood evil while living in the Kindling Club, but Daddy had kept the worst threats outside of our castle until the evil people blew a hole in that castle’s wall and killed its king.

I walk by a drunkard in an alley. He is lying on the ground in a puddle of vomit. Just the smell would normally make me nauseous and walk away, but all I feel is sympathy. He reminds me of one of my uncles in the club, and he makes me wonder if I’ll be in the same situation in a few days. I kneel beside him and ask him if he’s OK. I don’t know what I can do to help a man in such a sorry state, but I want to try.

What a surprise when I feel his hand reach between my legs and squeeze my pussy through the latex!

I jump back with a “what the fuck!” and then continue my walk. Ok, so that’s why people ignore these people, I think as I try to put this incident behind me. I especially want to forget how being groped by him makes me feel. I should feel violated. Instead, I’m getting wet.

Just a short walk from there, the neighborhood lights up with nightlife, and for the first time I see the neon glow of the word “Sirens.”

I didn't intend to come here, but I pause in front of the notorious building, torn by wonderment and anger.

From the outside, The Sirens Club looks so much fancier than the Kindling Club, and in a much busier neighborhood, right in the center of the city.

The bouncers appear to be letting girls enter without a cover charge, so I step forward and take my chances. The two linebacker-sized men look me over twice, weighing my looks against my rough clothes, but ultimately they wave me in.

When I walk through the door and see what the club has to offer, I wonder how they could ever have seen my home as a threat. Everyone dresses up to come here. They drink champagne. The women keep their clothes on.

But looking a little deeper, I start to see the connections. Even here, the men bring most of the money, and the women bring the beautiful bodies. Back home, my sisters would give the men table dances, but here the women fawn over the men in the lounge. Not much difference.

The more I check out The Sirens Club, the faker the experience seems. The Kindling Club doesn’t pretend to be anything but a strip club, but even so, it has a real bar where the bartender would really listen. Some dancers were friends with the regulars. For those only interested in the show, we performed, but for those wanting companionship, Daddy made the club feel like a family. That’s why we were beating the Siren’s Club.

Until yesterday.

I’m glad I don’t have mascara on, or it would be running down my cheeks. I’m thinking too much about Daddy. I need to stay angry.

A man walks up to me to flirt, but he walks away when he sees my tears.

I escape into the ladies’ room to relieve myself, of what I don’t know. The toilets are both taken, but I don’t need them or even the sink. I need the mirror. I need a reminder of who I am and of who I was.

I wonder, why did I come here? To learn something? To get angry? Or because I don’t have anywhere else to go?

I need answers. Why Daddy had to die. Why Marilyn is clinging to life. Why I’m wandering around Gotham all alone.

I think I’ll find the answers here if I hang back and observe like a fly on the wall.

I know if I mingle, I’ll be distracted, so I’ll stay in the shadows instead.

I can feel that drug still inside me, turning the slightest of sparks of almost any emotion into an inferno, and it won’t let up. I feel stupid for drinking that wine, now. Maybe its effects are permanent. I remember that Frank worked on genetic splicing; did that drug change my genes?

If I stay away from the crowd, maybe I can control my feelings.

The club is still under construction in parts, so there are unsightly spots that are unlit. I hide in those places. My black clothes make it easy for me to avoid detection.

I watch the parade of beauty and money for hours, looking for something, some reason to explain my family's tragic turn of fate, but all I see are people spending extravagantly and getting drunk, putting all they have on the table, but only the house ever wins in the end.

When the clock passes midnight, the flow of money and energy is mostly spent, and many of the customers have shuffled out. The workers had mingled with the customers all night, so I could barely tell them apart in the crowd, but now that the night nears its end, the workers move onto closing tasks. The three owners are pointing and giving orders, clearly distinguishing themselves from the rest of the workers.

Soon after, “Closing Time” plays on the loudspeakers, and the last of the customers are ushered out.

Now I’m totally in spy mode. One man is sweeping the dark areas where I was standing, so I climb scaffolding to avoid detection, and I am rewarded with a great view of the whole bar.

The hired help rush through their final chores and then call it a night, until only three women remain.

As soon as the women are alone, the black girl does a little dance and yells, “We’re back, baby!”

The girl with the big curls laughs and shakes her fist in the air, saying, “Take that, Penguin.”

The blonde girl remains collected but shines a mischievous smile. “Didn’t I tell you we’d come back stronger, Tabitha?”

“Well, Barb, we wouldn’t be celebrating without the help of a few thugs,” Tabitha replies.

Barbara glances sideways and says, “Hmm, I wonder who they work for?”

“Stop teasing,” says the third girl. “If Bruce suspects, so do others.”

“Oh, lighten up, Selina?” Tabitha challenges. “Jealous much?”

Selina gives her a hard stare.

“Whatever,” Tabitha says. “I don’t know what you see in him.”

They walk across the club to the bar and pour themselves some drinks and make a toast, but now they are so far away that I can’t hear.

I need to know what they are talking about, so I sneak down the scaffolding as slowly and quietly as I can. A partition panel divides sections of the club, so I tiptoe along the panel out of their view, so I can get closer.

“Oh, whatever shall we do?” Tabitha says with mock concern.

“I guess we’ll just have to confess to everything,” Barbara jokes back. “Blowing up the Kindling Club. Killing Carmine. Wiping out the League of Shadows.”

Suddenly, Barbara pulls the partition over, catching me red-handed. Tabitha steps in front of me, and Selina sneaks up from behind me, leaving me nowhere to run.

"Who are you?" Barbara asks while looking me over.

"Zoey," I reply obediently, like a child .

"It's that bitch from the Kindling Club," Tabitha spits out contemptuously.

"Oh! You are a dancer? What is your stripper name?" " Barbara asks, her eyes lighting up, as though having a stripper name was the coolest thing ever.

"I'm just Zoey," I reply meekly.

"Oh," Barbara barely hides her disappointment. “What do you want, little girl?”

I swallow but say nothing. I feel like I could explode from the adrenaline rushing through my veins, but I’m paralyzed.

“She wants to avenge her daddy, I think,” Tabitha says with a laugh, then she dares, “Well, go for it, then.”

I feel released by her dare. I attack like a cornered animal pushed too far, turning fear into rage.

I leap at Tabitha the way I was taught to fight in the dojo, baring my teeth.

Tabitha casually stepped to the side, avoiding my punch, while stunning me with an elbow to the back of my head.

My rage disappears as quickly as it came, as my vision and mind both get fuzzy for a moment, and the next thing I know, my hands are tied behind my back with Tabitha’s whip, and I’m lying face down on the floor. I hurry to get up twice, desperate to defend myself, but without the use of my arms, I stumble both times and fall back down.

Tabitha laughs. “You are almost as bad at sneaking around as you are at fighting. Did you ever notice that you leave shadows?”

I feel her strong hands grab my jacket by the collar and lift me to my feet, almost completely off of the ground, and now I’m staring into the eyes of Barbara, who I sense is the leader. Barbara’s eyes bore into me, and I have to look away, but Tabitha’s strong hands grab me by the hair and force me to face the blonde’s piercing eyes.

Barbara licks her lips, as she stands so close I can smell her perfume mixed with the scent of tequila. “My, you are a sweet thing, aren’t you?” She says while she touches my lips with her fingertips. Then she slides a finger into my mouth, against my tongue, daring me to bite.

A yank of my hair guarantees my submission.

“So, you think we killed your precious daddy, do you?” she breathes in my ear while exploring my mouth with her finger, and she caresses my face with her other hand. “No wonder you are upset.”

I’m breathing heavily, and my heart is racing, and my mouth is watering as her finger strokes my tongue. I start to cry. Not just tears, but pathetic moans as well, because I can’t control myself. This damn drug has magnified all of my feelings, except disgust. I can’t feel disgust anymore. Whatever should disgust me now fills me with longing, like having an unspeakable kink that reaches to the core of my being. That’s why I cry, as my heartbeat seems to have migrated down between my legs. I want to hate Barbara with all of my mind, but I can’t.

“Take those clothes off!” Selena demands, surprising everyone. “Does he like seeing you in my clothes? Take them off!”

Barbara smiles and withdraws; then she says to me, “You heard her. Take those clothes off. That’s what you are good at, right?”

“I – I can’t,” I whimper, as I struggle with my arms pinned behind my back.

Barbara sighs. “Very disappointing. You can’t overcome a little obstacle like this, so how did you imagine you could come in here and avenge your father?”

I can’t keep my eyes open, and I can’t reply, because I’m all choked up and raining tears. Damn it, but what hurts the most is that I know I’m disappointing her, and I feel so ashamed.

Barbara rolls her eyes, laughing cruelly. “Oh, come now, what kind of hero are you? You are so pathetic. Everything you do goes from bad to worse. It's like you live for peril. That should be your stripper name. You don't deserve a strong name. Henceforth, you shall be known as Peril,” she pronounces with a wicked laugh, loving her own inspiration.

“Take those clothes off!” Selina insists again, slamming her foot down.

“Here, let me help you,” Barbara says, then she pops the button atop my latex pants and pulls the zipper down. She steps back, wanting to watch me struggle to undress myself.

I try very hard to comply, though I have no idea why. With my hands behind my back, I can push the waistband over my ass with my fingertips. Then, with some bending and gyrating, I can lower the pants further, until about halfway down my thighs. But I can’t push any further. The latex is now bunched up tight, and no matter how much twisting I might do, the pants are not moving again.

Now Barbara walks around me, looking at me from all sides with approving eyes, and I hate myself because I’m getting wet again.

Barbara speaks while she admires. “Now, baby girl, I hate to disappoint you, but we didn’t have anything to do with your daddy’s death. Bruce Wayne came by before we opened the doors today, making all kinds of accusations. OK, I’ll admit, whoever took out the Kindling Club boosted out profits, but they helped Penguin even more. Cobblepot’s new gang is setting up a permanent Foxglove across town with nude shows. He has much more reason to want the Kindling Club out of the way. So you see, you don’t have any gripe with us. But we do have a gripe with you. We can’t just let people sneak in here, making threats and stealing Selina’s property – and I’m not talking about clothes.”

Barbara stares at me, saying nothing until I finally crack and ask, “What … do you want from me?”

“Punishment,” she says simply.

“Let’s take off her hand,” Tabitha says eagerly.

“Is that all you can think of?” Barbara says, laughing. Then she grabs a stool from the bar and slides it in front of me. “No, I have a better idea, a punishment to fit the crime.” Then she grabs my head and bends me over the stool and forces me to face Selina. “A good, old-fashioned spanking, with the aggrieved party doing the honors.”

Selina doesn’t seem interested at first, but then her eyes go cold, and she steps forward with determination. Barbara releases my hair, and Selina grabs it much more roughly, making sure it hurts.

I brace myself when Selina raises her hand and pauses for suspense before swinging down hard on my ass.

The impact of her leather glove on my skin feels like a whip, much sharper than I expected, and it takes my breath away.

Selina takes my silence as an insult, and her next strike is even harder.

With each clap against my bare ass, waves of cries and moans and saliva accelerate from my mouth. I look at Selina, wanting to beg for mercy, but her face is unreadable.

“Oh! Oh! Please! No!” I cry out, but each complaint brings my punishment harder and faster, yet I cry out even louder. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Oh!”

My mind wanders amid the relentless assault. I imagine how red my ass must be now. I think of how much Selina must hate me to hit so hard.

Selina seems to be slowing down, but slapping just as hard. I feel each impact more precisely, from the initial sting to the bounce of my ass to the long moment of anticipation before it starts again.

“Oh God! Please! Oh Fuck!” I cry out, and I’m not sure where I am, anymore. “Please Daddy! I’m so sorry! I won’t do it again!”

Then the slapping stops, and Selina lets my hair go. I don’t change my stance. I’m not ready for this to end. I’m on the verge of something. Spirit and body are tangled in a way that is both beautiful and obscene. My heart is racing too fast. The rhythm of my penance still echoes through my body. Old wounds open, and pleasure washes over the pain. My pussy is dripping almost as fast as my mouth.

“What the fuck!” Selina says with a confused laugh, stepping away.

“She’s getting off on this!” Barbara says excitedly, then she grabs my hair again and resumes slapping my ass with her bare hand. But Barbara slaps differently than Selina did. Barbara makes sure to punish my pussy with each meeting of flesh on flesh.

“Oh my God!” I utter once, then I’m beyond words. I am breathing. My heart is racing. Every sensation I feel jolts through my body like an electric charge.

Then, in what feels like a long, aching moment, Barbara stops slapping me. She kneels behind me now, and now she’s rubbing my pussy carefully, like she’s on a mission, like she’s trying to summon a genie from a bottle.

I want to spread my legs for her, but the latex is holding my thighs firmly in place.

That doesn’t stop Barbara from pushing three fingers inside of me up to the knuckle while rubbing my clit harder with the other hand.

I can’t tell the difference between love and whatever I am feeling right now. I can’t tell the difference between my worst nightmare and my best fantasy. My mind is shattering, and my body is convulsing in waves. All of the shame and pain and guilt and fear and sadness that was overwhelming me a moment ago has morphed into the purest pleasure I’ve ever known.

I open my eyes, and I see Barbara’s face focused on pleasuring me, as though she hoped to join me where I was going. Tabitha flashes me a sinister grin, and Selina is watching intently, but with her hand over her mouth.

Time has nearly stopped now, keeping me in this over-heated state for what feels like an hour, and I don’t want it to stop. I feel like I love these three women who had set out to torture me.

But when the waves of orgasms pass some limit, a clearer mind returns to me, even while time still passes at a snail’s pace. I can see that Tabitha's expression is still fierce, and that Barbara is not pleasuring me to make me happy; she is getting her own pleasure, and I can see a sadistic glint in her eye. I can’t trust that I’ll like what she has planned for me next.

Now I realize the three Sirens aren’t going to simply release me, and we aren’t all going to suddenly be lovers, doing this every night.

I need to get away, and it feels like I have all of the time in the world, but I’m stuck with my pants down by my knees and my arms behind my back and with three women who could each kick my ass with ease when time finally speeds up. If last night was any indication, time will accelerate soon, now that I’m returning from my last orgasm.

It feels hopeless until I realize that my fingertips can reach the knot of the whip that binds me. The knot feels loose. My captors are confident that I can't escape even without the leather handcuffs. So if I can figure out what parts of the whip to pull, the knot should simply collapse.

I pull on each part of the knot in turn, carefully testing for any give in the structure. The rough texture of the whip resists my efforts, but once I sense the weak link, I work on it as fast as I can, because time is already speeding up.

Finally, my hands are free, and I pull away from Barbara’s probing fingers.

She reaches to grab me, but I roll around the stool away from her grasp.

I reach down to pull up my pants, and then I see Tabitha swinging her whip towards my face. I turn away and let the whip strike me on my arm, while I pull my pants up. The snap of the whip doesn’t even hurt. In fact, it excites me a little, as though someone nibbled on my nipple, and thus time again slows down for a moment.

Tabitha tries to lunge at me again, but I see her muscles flex before she can even get started. I duck and spin and manage to trip her before she can regain her balance.

It occurs to me that I could totally have her at my mercy, as she had me at hers several minutes ago, but I won’t have this advantage for long, and I’d still have Barbara and Selina to deal with, so instead, I sprint for the nearest EXIT sign.

I find an emergency exit, which does not need a key but sets off an alarm as soon as I press it open.

I glance behind me, see nobody, but I run as fast as I can anyway through the dark alley, not slowing down until I reach the main street. Somehow I feel safer now, even though it’s almost 2 AM and the street is empty except for two homeless people sleeping.

I’m breathing more calmly now, and my heartbeat doesn’t feel so stressed. Time is back to normal. My feelings are back to normal. My ass and pussy should feel on fire after being worked over by Selina and Barbara. I should be in shock from all that has happened. Instead, I feel fine. Invigorated, even.

But I don’t know where to go next.


	4. Frisking the Cat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I used this same chapter name in another story, but I'm really fond of it :)
> 
> Sorry it took so long to deliver this chapter, but I lost my job a few days ago, so chapter should come more quickly now.

“Miss?” A hand gently pushes my shoulder.

 I turn over and try to keep sleeping.

“Miss?” I hear again with another gentle shove, and finally I open my eyes to see a woman dressed in white like an angel.

A moment later, I remember that I’ve been in the hospital waiting room all morning, and I sit up and rub my eyes.

“Sorry, I was going to let you sleep, but my shift is almost up,” the nurse says.

“My mom?” I ask hopefully.

“Not yet,” she replies. “Actually, her surgeon says they want to keep her under for another day.”

“What?” I ask, alarmed.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she hurries to clarify. “The doctor tried to ease her to consciousness, but your mom began moving around too much, and he’s afraid she might hurt herself if she wakes up too early.”

“But she’s … going to be okay?” I ask, bracing for any bad news.

The nurse nods. “She’s doing much better today.”

I sigh in relief.

For the first time, she lets me sit with Marylin in the intensive care room.

When I arrived, I was expecting to see the beautiful face of my mother resting comfortably on the bed, like I’ve seen on so many TV shows and movies after an operation, but she looks even worse than she looked before the operation. Her face is half-covered in a mask. Her throat looks bruised. More tubes are attached to her than when I last saw her two nights ago. Machines surround her, making a variety of beeping, clicking and squishing sounds, and lights flash all around her like those on a Christmas tree.

The nurse assures me that this is all normal after such a complicated operation, but it freaks me out, anyway, to see her life seemingly supported by a thread.

The nurse suggests that I take a shower in a nearby impatient ward to settle my nerves. She doesn’t have to tell me the other reason I might want to shower.

After a crazy day of being trapped in these latex leggings and warm jacket, I’ve worked up quite a sweat.

But almost as soon as I leave the ICU, I glimpse Bruce and Alfred at the receptionist's desk just down the hallway.

I duck behind a wall.

What are they doing here? They obviously don’t care that much for me. Do they feel responsible or something?  

Well, I’m not throwing a pity party.

When I see them turn a corner, I sneak up to the same receptionist and tell her that I’m no longer staying at Wayne Manor and give her the Kindling Club’s phone number instead. I ask her to call there if anything changes with my mom, and then I hurry out of the hospital before Bruce and Alfred can see me.

I hadn’t looked at a clock since the nurse woke me up, so I have no idea what time it is. But once I leave the hospital, I can see the sun is already low in the sky, telling me that I’m still on my usual sleep schedule. Those of us who work at strip clubs mostly sleep during the day and work at night.

I begin the long walk home, and by the time I arrive at the Kindling Club, orange is spreading through the clouds overhead, which looks beautiful even in Gotham, while it lasts.

I am surprised to find the main entrance to my home blocked off by yellow police tape, declaring a crime scene, as if there is any doubt left after seeing the large hole in the front of the building.

I tell myself that it would be best to obey the crime scene warnings and to enter my home from the back because I know the combination to the lock that keeps the rear door shut.

But I’m not very good at obeying that wise voice in my head, and I’m distracted by a cat sitting in the shadows near the hole, which looks as large and mysterious as a cave. The cat is, in turn, fixated on something else, and I can’t tell what that is until it moves. At first, I think it’s a mouse, but then it flies into the cave, and the cat chases after. It must be a bird or a bat.

I love cats, and I hate bats, so following them into the void is a difficult decision, but curiosity gets the better of me.

I can’t see anything in the shadows. The cat and the bat have been absorbed by the darkness, and all I can see now is the destruction. The spot on the ground where Daddy’s body had dropped dead just two nights ago is cruelly glowing such that I can even see the body outline drawn on the floor in his place, making it impossible for me to ignore how much I had lost here.

I collapse onto a pile of bricks, mere inches from where he breathed his last breath, and I start to cry. Tears come down in streams, and it feels like they will never stop.

I’m not interested in remembering what happened or in finding clues anymore; I just want to go upstairs to my bedroom, bury my face in a pillow and cry or sleep or read or do _anything_ at all that reminds me of when I was just a normal 16-year-old stripper-wannabe daughter to a stripper mom in her Daddy’s club.

I don’t remember ever feeling so small in this building that I grew up in, and nothing feels normal. The hole in the front has flooded the interior with fresh air mixed with the scent of destruction. Someone had shut off the electricity, making my home feel abandoned.

I think I can fix that, at least.  I know this building well, having followed Daddy around for years, and after flipping a few switches in the circuit breaker box, the whole building lights up, as though the building was in full swing. I go from room to room to shut down the multi-colored and neon lights. I don’t want people outside to get the crazy idea that the bar has re-opened.

About halfway through the process, the phone rings at the bar, and I freeze. Who could be calling? The hospital shouldn’t be calling until tomorrow, so I figure this could only mean bad news. I reluctantly lift the receiver and say, “Hello?”

I hear breathing on the other end, but no reply.

“Hello?” I try again.

The other end clicks off.

I feel a shiver run through me, but I try to shrug it off. The club receives its share of crank calls, and at least it wasn’t the hospital calling, so I should be relieved, but that was creepy as hell.

I leave the rest of the bar’s lights on, suddenly feeling scared of the dark, and then I head upstairs to my bedroom and click on the bedside lamp.

I hesitate because something in the air and the shadows feels very wrong.

Then I look at the window, and I see her shape, and I stumble back and fall onto my bed.

“Sucks about your parents,” the female voice says, as the silhouette steps forward into the light, and I see Selina Kyle approaching me, her whip swinging from her hip.

“What…?” I hesitate, feeling both terrified and excited by her revelation. “What do you want?”

“You never gave me my clothes back,” Selina says ominously.

I hurry to take off the jacket.

But she raises her hand, signaling for me to stop. “Let’s talk a bit first.”

“Why are you here?” I ask.

“Not for you,” Selina says,  shrugging. “I was planning on camping out here. That’s just how I live my life; I set up camp in abandoned places. I figured you’d be staying with Bruce for a while, after what he told us yesterday, so I thought nobody would be here.”

I shake my head. “What did he tell you?”

Selina looks away and says nothing for a moment, then finally, reluctantly, she says, “Sorry about what Barbara did to you.”

I feel anger welling up now. “You’re the one who demanded I get undressed.”

“Those clothes are expensive, and I thought you would be wearing underwear,” Selina countered. “Didn’t think it would be a big deal. Now I know better.”

“You slapped me,” I countered. “ _Really_ hard.”

“Well, you pissed me off,” Selina spits back, then sighs. “Bruce said … nevermind. I didn’t think … I mean, what the fuck happened, anyway?”

“Why are you asking me? You guys raped me,” I reply quickly, barely even considering my words.

Selina thinks for a long moment, and I can’t read her face, and then finally she says, “I guess we were a little out of line. Barbara was just having some fun, and sometimes she gets out of hand, but not to blame the victim or anything, but you can’t tell me you weren’t into it.”

I want to deny everything and shrink away in shame, but somehow just feeling ashamed makes me excited, which doesn’t speak well of me. I always thought there was a big difference between fantasies of rape and actual rape, but I’m not sure anymore, at least not for me. People who are raped aren’t supposed to get turned on and have their minds explode like the fourth of July. They aren’t supposed to feel the emotions I was feeling. So although I cried in shame and fear last night, and although I never consented, I don’t regret what happened. So was it really rape?

“No, I was into it,” I have to confess the politically incorrect answer, shameful as it is.

“Why?” Selina asks accusingly. “Is that something strippers do? Did you pull that same shit on Bruce?”

“I didn’t mean to do any of that,” I insist. Then I decide to tell her everything, not because I trust her or feel I owe her an answer but because I need to tell someone, and I think she might listen. “That was my first time stripping when I met Bruce, and I took ecstasy before going on stage to get into the mood and past the jitters. At least, I thought it was ecstasy, but it must have been something much stronger, and I can’t shake it. It’s still in me. It’s like permanent.”

Selina seems both curious and skeptical. “Who gave you that shit?”

“I don’t know his real name, but we called him Frank in the club. He worked in that Indian Hill place last year, but he died next to Daddy during the explosion,” I reply.

“Well, fuck,” Selina says, suddenly sympathetic. “I didn’t know the virus could work like that, but you were like: transformed. You sucked at fighting when we trapped you, and then suddenly you were like Bruce Lee. What’s the deal with that?”

“I don’t know,” I reply, not wanting to tell her the truth.

But she knows I’m keeping something from her, and she says, “That’s okay, I wouldn’t give that up, either.”

“It’s not that; it’s just embarrassing,” I say, but embarrassment is like a kink for me now, so I want to let her in. “Everything makes me horny, now, and if I get excited enough, I feel very hot and time stops. So when Tabitha attacked me, everything was like in slow motion. I saw every punch before she threw it.”

Selina nods. Amazingly, she believes me, and she sits beside me on the bed. “Do you always share everything with everyone? Why were you at The Sirens club, anyway?”

“Bruce said that you were probably the guys who blew this place up, so I just wanted to see who would do that to me. But then Barbara told me it wasn’t you, so I don’t know who killed my daddy,” I say, and tears begin to flow when I mention Daddy. “Sorry, I can’t believe he is gone.”

Selina stares at me, shaking her head. “Bruce was right; I thought you were messing with his head, but you really are just some kind of stupid innocent.”

“What??” I say while wiping my eyes.

“Why would you believe anything Barbara told you?” Selina asks back. “Maybe she did do it. Maybe I did it.”

I stare at her in disbelief which is turning to anger. “So … you …”

“No, I didn’t do it. Maybe Barbara did it, I don’t know,” Selina explains coldly, purely logical, “but why would you believe anything either of us says? Bruce took you home and took care of you and told you that we are guilty, but you ran away from him. Now, one of the girls who you know for sure hurt you last night sneaks into your window and tells you she’s innocent, and you believe her. That’s just stupid.”

Selina’s eyes are piercing and serious, and I lose that staring contest.

“I guess I just wanted to believe,” I say, “because if I believed that my Daddy’s killer finger-fucked me to an orgasm, I’d want to kill myself.”

Selina’s stare softens as she says, “Well, okay, I get that. And if it makes you feel better, I promise we had nothing to do with your father’s death. At least I didn’t.”

Her eyes strike me as very honest, and maybe I’m a sucker, but I say anyway, “I believe you.”

But maybe she’s lying about something else.

So I ask, “But then why are you here? I don’t believe you just wanted a place to crash.”

Selina is surprised, and she avoids my eyes for the first time. She refuses to answer. Instead, she asks, “Do you have any food here?”

“Downstairs,” I say, letting her change the subject, and we both rise from the bed. “There are pizzas, fries and burgers in the fridge. We just have to cook them.”

“Cool,” Selina says. “Any salad stuff?”

“This is a strip club,” I reply.

“Oh, yeah,” Selina says with a laugh, and we exit the room and descend the stairs.

I’m surprised to find that the kitchen is mostly empty with the refrigerator door open and all of the food gone. Thieves must have ransacked the place after the detectives left.

“Figures,” Selina says flatly. “Guess we’ll have to go food hunting.”

“Maybe not.” I lead her into the dressing room, and I open one of the drawers under the sink.

Selina smiles brightly when she sees the row of granola bars, completely untouched. I grab a bottle of Kahlua and a carton of milk from the bar and make Sombreros; then we sit side by side, stuffing ourselves.

We are both small girls, so after just one drink each, we are feeling buzzed.

“So what do you think of Bruce?” Selina asks between bites and a swig.

“He’s really nice,” I say while refilling our glasses. “I thought he was into me, but whenever I thought he might make a move, he’d pull away. I think he’s stuck on someone else. Then he and that butler of his made me feel like trash, so … I don’t know what to think.”

Selina smiles a bit too much when she says, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

After two crunchy maple granola bars, I’m stuffed. The nurse at the hospital kindly fed me when I visited the ICU, so wasn’t that hungry to begin with.

Selina, however, is munching hers down like the Cookie Monster, so I don’t think she’s anywhere near done.

I take off the faux leather jacket and lift the black shirt underneath over my head before Selina asks me, “What are you doing?”

“You want these back, don’t you?” I say as I kick off the boots and peel off the latex leggings. “I’ve been basting inside these all day, and I’m dying for a shower. Don’t worry; I’ll wash these before I give them back.”

Selina laughs. At first, she seems surprised that I’d disrobe in front of her, but then she looks at my naked body in an all-too-familiar way. The excitement that rushes through my body is becoming familiar to me as well. I give her a brief, playful show of my dance repertoire before I disappear into the shower stall at the end of the dressing room.

I take a long shower. The white noise smudges my thoughts and memories, letting the sensations of the pulsating stream of water take over my consciousness, and it has a calming effect. But when I grab the bar of soap from its nook in the wall and slide it over my arms and legs, my skin comes alive. Then I lather up my breasts. My belly. Between my legs. Everywhere. I lose track of how long I’m in there. Maybe five minutes. Maybe twenty.

Will I ever be able to just relax in the shower again?

I remember that Selina is out there, waiting for me. Does she know what I’m doing in here? Am I making a lot of noise?  I can almost see the disdain in her eyes, and somehow that turns me on. I see her in my mind. I imagine her in here, with me. I imagine my hands are her hands, exploring my body. I imagine her bending me over her knee and spanking me again, and the thought is enough to make me gasp. I’m burning up, but I want it hotter, so I turn the cold water valve down. The burn of the hot water reminds me of Selina’s hand snapping on my ass like a whip. I turn the cold water all the way down. I don’t know what sounds are coming out of my mouth, because my whole body is on fire, like my clit has expanded to include every inch of my skin and is revving up to redline. My heart is pounding like a bass drum,  and I stay in redline for an hour, a day, a year. I can’t tell.

Except that the hot water turns cold as the small water heater is exhausted without warning. Time quickly accelerates. I hurriedly shut off the water and rush out of the stall.

Selina appears drunk from Sombreros when I burst out, and she looks alarmed when she sees me.

“What happened?” she asks. “You’re burned!”

But when I grab a towel to dry off, and my engine slows down to the idling range, Selina says, “What the fuck!”

“What?” I ask with a smile.

“Your whole body was bright red a few seconds ago, and now it looks almost normal,” she says, amazed.

“Really?” I ask as I slip into a bathrobe. “I forgot. When time slows down, I kind of heal faster, I think.”

“A lot faster!” Selina says. “That’s fucking amazing!”

I laugh with a flirty smile. I don’t mean anything by it; it’s something I grew up doing, and after a few drinks and an orgasm or two, I don’t have the awareness to censor myself.

But Selina doesn’t know that, and when she frowns, I look away, worried about what she’s thinking.

“I see why he likes you,” she says, surprising me.

“What? Bruce? Why?” I ask, certain that she’ll insult me as shallow and sexual, and I know I would deserve it.

Instead, she says with a deep sadness, “Because you are beautiful, and there is nothing fake about it.”

I don’t know what to say, or even if I should thank her, because she doesn’t mean it as a compliment. She means it as a concession, and I finally understand what she’s been hiding from me.

I hate myself for not seeing it sooner, because she is so wrong.

“You are beautiful, too,” I say.

“Pah-lease!” she denies while rolling her eyes.

“No, really,” I say as I approach her and touch her hair. “I really wish I had curly hair like yours. And your eyes are amazing, and your body looks just as good as mine. We are the same size, even.”

“Pfft,” she says dismissively. “I’ve just seen you naked, and it’s no contest.”

I smile wickedly. “Let me be the judge of that.”

“No fucking way!”

“How about just taking off your jacket, then?” I ask. “It makes you look like a boy.”

Selina shrugs and unsnaps her jacket. “Alright, but that’s all you are getting. None of that babysteps shit.”

She’s about to just fling the jacket away, but I raise my hand to stop her. “Slow down and turn around.”

“Why?”

“You’re in my place, and I’m the expert here, so just do what I say,” I reply, and I kneel down in front of her, as though she was on a stage. “Show me.”

She groans like I just don’t get it, but her smile and willingness tells me otherwise. She turns around and gives me a slightly exaggerated hip pivot halfway through, and then tosses the jacket to me. “Okay, I’m done,” she declares.

“Just give me the shoes,” I say, figuring that should be easy for her, and I start to hum a song I must have heard in the club a hundred times: “Lady in Red.”

Selina laughs and tries to kick off her shoes in a sexy way, but it’s the most awkward thing ever. “Ok, enough,” she demands.

“Your shirt,” I say.

“No!” she refuses, panicking, but she’s still dancing around, so I keep singing.   ** _Never seen you look so lovely as you do tonight._**   ** _I’ve never see you shine so bright._**

“Oh, god, you need singing lessons,” she says.

I laugh, but am undeterred. **_Never seen so many ask you if you wanted to dance, looking for a little romance, given half a chance._**

“This song is so fucking corny!” she says, as she undoes the top buttons on her black denim shirt until her bra peeks through the cleavage.

“Don’t stop now!” I say. I forget the next few words in the song, so I just hum it _._

Selina sighs and figures she might as well finish unbuttoning.

**_The lady in black is dancing with me, cheek to cheek_ ,** I sing, changing just one word. **_There’s nobody here, just you and me._**

Selina bites her lip and slips out of the shirt, never breaking eye contact.

_“_ Turn around,”  I whisper, then continue humming.

Selina waves the shirt above her head like a flag, and she shows off her bare back, then drops the shirt at her feet.

“Now the pants,” I say eagerly.

“Fuck no!” she spits out as she stumbles. Her last drink is finally hitting her.

I keep singing, **_Never seen you looking so gorgeous as you do tonight…_**

Selina is dancing around in circles with an almost angry look in her eyes, but I keep singing and humming, and she keeps dancing until finally, her hands hover over her pant’s button.

**_Lady in black is dancing with me, cheek to cheek_ ,** I repeat loudly, feeling excited

The pants shimmy down, revealing a surprisingly hot, pink bikini bottom, and I make a little whoop like the men do at the club.

“Shut up!” Selina warns, but she’s turning around, and she pushes her pants all the way down to the floor. “Okay, I can’t believe you got me to do this.”

“Now, the rest,” I insist.

I see the horrified look on her face, replacing the steel trap she always kept over her emotions, and I think maybe I should stop, but I’m too excited now, and I think she is, too, somewhere behind that wall of fear.

So I switch songs and pace.

**_You’re too sexy for your shirt_ ,** I sing and clap in rhythm. **_Too sexy for your shirt, so sexy it hurts._**

Selina laughs and dances quicker, and I know it’s only a matter of time.

**_You’re too sexy for your car, too sexy for your car, too sexy by far._ **

Finally, she reaches behind her back, unclasps the bra.

“Not too fast,” I say, then continue repeating the same “too sexy” refrains over and over.

Selina turns around once, then twice, holding her bra to her chest, then dropping the bra, replacing the cups with her hands, and I start to sing faster. Then she throws her hands in the air, revealing two perfect little A-cups, and I yell out and clap, the way every stripper loves to hear.

Selina doesn’t need any prompting anymore. She’s totally into it, dancing in rhythm to my horrid singing, and after two rotations, her thumbs move under her panty straps and inch them down tantalizingly, then suddenly to the floor, revealing a perfectly landscaped pussy with just a tiny, reddish puff above the prize. For all of Selina’s disdain for her body, she had kept it ready for a show like this.

I stop singing, and Selina instinctively covers herself with her hands and asks, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Don't hide. I was just admiring you.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” she says. "My tits are too small."

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I say, feeling hot. “You’re so sexy; you’re giving me bad thoughts.”

Selina’s eyes open wide, but then she says, “Doesn’t everything give you bad thoughts these days?”

“Not this bad,” I joke.

She laughs uncomfortably, but she drops her hands and lets me look her over.

I stand up and drop my bathrobe, to her surprise, but she doesn’t withdraw.

We are just two five-foot-one girls with light colored hair, admiring each other.

Selina surprises me by reaching out and touching my tits with her hands, sending a shiver through my body that she must feel. “I wish mine were this big,” she says.

I touch her tits, too. “I wish mine were as perfect as yours,” I counter, then I slide my hands up to her shoulders and then to her biceps. “And you are much stronger than I am.”

Selina strokes my skin down to my hips, energizing everywhere she touches. She says, “I wish I had your confidence. I can’t believe how smooth you are. And you smell good. And you are so fucking nice. No wonder he likes you.”

Frustrated that she still doesn’t know what she's doing to me, I grab her hand gently and move it between my legs. “This is how you make me feel.”

"Ew!" Selina gasps, disgust showing on her lips but excitement in her eyes. She doesn't pull away.

So I lean in to kiss her, whispering, “And this, too.”

Her hands hang in the air as our lips meet.

And just as I feel her fingers and arms wrapping around my back, the door to the dressing room swings open, and a dark shadow darkens the door frame.

Selina and I jump back and cover ourselves with our hands.

A tall man dressed in black steps into the room and puts a hat on his head as soon as he crosses the threshold. I sigh in relief when I see his face. “Uncle Jervis!” I say excitedly, forgetting my checkered history with this man.

Right behind him are two very fat, large men. The Terrible Tweeds. The talkative one says, “Look, Boss, we’ve caught the Cat and Peril together, and ooh la la!”

“Nonsense, Peril is not her name,” Jervis says to my relief, but then he touches my cheek and adds, “This girl is Alice, the very same.”

He smiles at Selina and me with those deep, entrancing eyes of his, and he touches Selina’s cheek with his other hand.

He looks us over then raises his pocket watch, showing us the time, and adds, “I’m grateful to interrupt, a moment so sure to corrupt. I pray that I am not too late, to protect your precious fate. There’s only one Alice in my tale, and everyone else should be male. Yet what a lovely sight you two make; another look at this I shall take. ”

I’m not sure what he says next, though I’m sure it’s important. All I can hear now is the ticking of his watch, and all I can see is an infinity behind his eyes, and I’m pulled into the black hole within.

And then I disappear.


	5. All the Best People Are Crazy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title courtesy of Melanie Martinez, but also ...
> 
> “You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret all the best people are.”  
> ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

I wake up on the bench in the Kindling Club wearing a blue & white mini dress. All of the lights in the building are shut off except those above the stage. Selina is dancing naked under the lights while the Tweeds gawk at her excitedly, but she’s not acting like herself or like any stripper I’ve ever seen. She’s acting like a cat, slinking around and meowing.

I don’t immediately notice that Jervis is sitting beside me, but I’m not startled when he says, “Remember when we last sat here, Alice?”

I blink, feeling confused, “I’m Zoey… Right?”

Jervis frowns. His eyes penetrate mine, and he touches my cheek. “I would never lie to you.”

My heart skips a panicked beat, and I put my hand to my chest and say with an apologetic smile, “Oh, no, of course not Uncle Jervis.”

“Just Jervis,” he corrects with a smile, then repeats, “Do you remember when we last sat on this bench?”

I shiver and nod. I remember it very well, but I’ve been trying to forget it for the five years since.

He smiles reassuringly. He looks off towards the stage, but he seems to be looking much further away. “We had a nice conversation.”

“I – I’m not sure of what I remember,” I say.

“I remember it perfectly,” he says, and I know whatever he’s going to say is the truth. “I was watching you sitting here alone with a beautiful smile, and you were pretend-singing the songs that your sisters on stage were dancing to. That’s what you called them, your sisters, so I said you could call me your brother.”

I smile back at him. Now that he reminds me, I do remember. “And you sat down and pretended to sing with me.”

His eyes light up, touched that I remembered. “That’s right! And you were wearing a dress just like this one. A bit smaller, though, of course. I asked you why you chose that dress…”

“Because I was watching Alice in Wonderland that week, and I wanted to look like Alice,” I say. Daddy rented a new movie every week, and I spent all week watching each one.

He nods enthusiastically, saying, “I remember telling you it was my favorite movie, too, and you said that things were getting ‘curiouser and curiouser.’” He laughs, but then his expression turns serious, almost solemn. “That’s when I fell in love with you.”

I stop breathing. That’s not how I remember it. I don't remember even liking Alice in Wonderland very much. But he so wants it to be true, how can I argue?  Instead, I smile and remember, “You said I was so small that you could throw me up, and I would parachute down with my skirt, like in the movie.”

He nods. “And you whispered in my ear that you’d be so embarrassed because you weren’t wearing any underwear.”

I swallow, and I realize that I’m not wearing any underwear now. I don’t even remember having this dress in my wardrobe. Did he dress me?

“Then I asked you for a favor,” he reminds me.

“You wanted me to curtsey, like in the movie,” I say, “except you asked me to lift my skirt so you could get a better look.”

“Then you flipped me the finger,” he says with a laugh.

But I’m not laughing. “Daddy was so mad at what I did that he spanked me in front of everyone.”

“You should have just done what I asked, because everyone got to see your bare ass when he bent you over his lap,” he says with a light laugh. “But then you would never have awoken. You looked at me the whole time he spanked you. It was your first sexual experience, wasn’t it? And that’s when I first saw Alice in you.”

I cock my head like a curious dog. I don’t remember that. I just remember the embarrassment.  “I … don’t know.”

“Of course you do,” he insists. “I’ll bet every time you even think of getting spanked, you get hot and bothered.”

I feel my pussy react just thinking about it, and it’s pointless to deny. “How did you know?” I ask.

Up until now, he was looking back and forth between me and the stage, but now he turns his whole body and faces me directly. “Because I know more about you than you know about yourself, Alice. You told yourself every day that the spanking was traumatic, but secretly, maybe unconsciously, that’s the moment you compare to all of your sexual fantasies. I could see it in your eyes.”

I try to speak, but I’m choking up. Finally, I can only say, “I was too young to feel that … You shouldn’t have …”

He nods and confesses, “You are right, of course. You were too young, and I shouldn’t have. That is why you didn’t see me again for five years. I didn’t want to make the same mistakes I made last time when you were my sister. We were orphans, and you were only eight, and you _disobeyed_ me, so I lowered your skirt, and I spanked you. That was _my_ first sexual experience, and I didn’t know how sick that was until they explained it to me in Arkham. They taught me to accept the truth about who I am, so I knew that if I saw you again, I wouldn’t be able to resist you.”

I don't know what he's talking about. I don't remember any of that, but one thing seems clear. “So ... you want to fuck little girls?”

He shakes his head defensively. “It’s more complicated than that. I’m in love with you, Alice, however old you are and whatever body you are in. Nobody else can do it for me, and I can’t control myself when I’m with you.  After our parents died, I know my love for you, when you were the other Alice, was too strong, and I hurt you and made you run away, and I’m sorry for that.

“When I found this new you in this club, my new Alice, I was so excited, because now I had another chance with you. But you were just a child, again, and I if I stayed, I would have hurt you, just like before. So I stayed away. Then a few weeks ago I heard that you were bartending here and had grown up, so I came back. ”

“I saw you a few times last week,” I say, “but you never said hi. You stayed far away from me until you tipped me on stage.”

“I wasn’t sure you were Alice, anymore,” he says. “I thought maybe I made a mistake. You looked great, and you dressed sexy at the bar, but you didn’t seem as passionate as Alice should be. But THEN I saw you dance on stage, and I knew you were now completely Alice. I had been chasing the wrong Alice all of these years.”

“How can you tell?” I ask nervously, having an identity crisis.

“I can see it in your eyes. You have my sister’s blood in you. It enhances your desires. Hugo Strange isolated the poison and gave you a healthy extract, and your spirit is so strong, now. Pure. When I saw you on stage with the fire in your eyes, I knew you were back. Resurrected. Now, you are the best Alice that ever was, because you are beautiful and grown up and I don’t have to feel ashamed of being in love with my sister, anymore. I can love you, instead. Once I saw you on stage, I was determined to spend the rest of my life with you, but then that fucking rich boy pulled you away from me, and the bomb went off, and I thought I lost you again. But here you are. Tonight. Nothing else matters.”

“That’s so great!” I say with a smile. I’m still lost in his eyes, but I’m having trouble understanding what he says. The more he talks, the more he feels like a stranger. I’m even starting to feel like a stranger to myself.

His smile drops a bit. “You don’t look excited. Do you think you can love me, too?”

I feel suddenly stressed out, like I’m cornered. “Oh, of course, but…”

“But…” he repeats, suddenly worried.

“It’s just that since I drank that potion and became Alice, I’m not the girl I used to be. I feel like I’m falling in love with someone new every day,” I say. “My feelings are so all over the place, how do I know who I’m really in love with?”

“Are you in love with her?” he asks anxiously, pointing at Selina, who is still dancing naked on the stage.

“I don’t know. You kind of interrupted something earlier, so I don’t know how I feel. Is it OK if I love her, too?” I ask hopefully.

The fierceness in his eyes tells me that it’s not OK.

“We are meant to be together,” he insists. “I’m sorry, but I’ve lost you for so long. You can’t ask me to wait any longer.”

His jealousy grabs me by the heart, and I don’t want for him to worry. I lean forward and kiss him softly on the lips. I still feel the tension in his shoulders, so I pull him tight to me, and he finally relaxes. I whisper in his ear, “I hate to worry you like this, but since I’ve become Alice, I don’t know where my heart will take me. I don’t know if I can love only one person, anymore. Can you share me with someone else?”

He glares at me angrily, and I think he’s going to command me, take control, but he contains himself and says, “I don’t know …”

I smile excitedly, reassuringly, and say, “Maybe you can love other people, too. Maybe we can fall in love with someone together. Come with me.” I stand up from the bench and beacon him to follow me. I lead him to the stage and pull his arm around me, and we both watch as Selina dances.  “She’s beautiful, isn’t she? Don’t you think she’s hot?” I pitch, as we watch her crawl around the stage.

“She thinks she’s a cat,” he says, unimpressed.

“Well, whose fault is that?” I ask, nudging him.

He sighs and raises his pocket watch.

Selina stops dancing and stares at the watch like a cat stalking a mouse.

Jervis speaks to Selina with a dominating voice: “You are no longer a cat; you are Selina Kyle again, and you are madly in love with Alice, here, and with myself, and you have always wished to join us in a ménage à trois. You shall remain our slave until we set you free.”

I smile at him. “Really? Doesn’t it have to rhyme or something?”

He smiles back. “No, I only do that for fun sometimes.”

Selina is dazed for a moment, like coming out of deep sleep. Going from cat to human mode must be a big adjustment. She kneels down on the stage, looks back and forth between Jervis and me then covers her body shyly, as though she hadn’t been dancing around naked for fifteen minutes. She’s back to being Selina. The old spell is cancelled, but I see no sign that Jervis’s new spell is working.

“Selina,” Jervis begins. “Do you want to make love to Alice?”

Selina swallows and nods her head.

“And Alice, you want to have sex with this cat girl,” he says to me, not asking a question. “Why don’t you get up there and show me how you feel about her?”

I look at him, confused. “Aren’t you going to join us? I have a bed upstairs. It would be more comfortable for all of us.”

“No, I’m not ready. I want to watch and see how much you love her. Get up on the stage and show me,” he says, then instructs the Tweed boys to guard the building and not to watch. This show is for him alone.

I start walking towards the dressing room.

“Where are you going?” he asks sharply.

“To the dressing room,” I reply. “That’s how people get onto the stage.”

“Why don’t you climb up here,” he says, not really asking. “And take off that dress. You haven’t earned it yet.”

I shiver at his sudden hostility, but I slip out of the blue & white dress and hand it to him, leaving me naked except for my shoes, then I climb up a chair and step over the tip rail and onto the stage. Jervis doesn’t help me at all, but Selina takes my hand so that I don’t lose my balance.

“What should we do for you?” I ask, wanting to earn the privilege of wearing that dress again.

“Don’t ask me; you’re the one who wants to make love to her,” he says, acting disinterested. “So both of you, have at it.”

Selina and I both glance at him in confusion, but then I feel Selina’s hand touch mine, and the confusion disappears.

We stand face to face, fingertips touching each other’s sides, and I feel transported back to the moment before Jervis interrupted us.

I forget about him. I see only Selina.

It feels like my senses are suddenly freed and are immediately focused on Selina. I’m lost in her hazel eyes, lightly accented with mascara, but she wears no other makeup, as though she doesn’t give a fuck what people think. Her scent excites me. I feel the heat of her body in the air, even where are bodies aren’t touching.  Her pink lips are bare and inviting, so I kiss them, and I almost swoon. I savor the taste of her mouth. She keeps her face calm, but her body is trembling.

I’m searching into Selina’s eyes and into my heart to know if these feelings are real. I need to know because if Jervis had conjured these feelings up, implanting them in us, they would mean nothing at all. But then I realize they must be real because I felt this same way for Selina even before he entered my mind.

We kiss and touch and gaze intimately for about a minute, when Jervis suddenly says, “Get on with it, already.”

Selina is shaking. She was shy about her body before today, before she dream-danced as a cat in front of those Tweed pervs, so making love under the lights before another strange man was not high on her to-do list.

It was on my list, though, I’m embarrassed to confess. I had often fantasized about making love to one of my sisters in front of Daddy. Could Jervis have somehow known that? I had suppressed the fantasy for so long, because it was so shameful, and now that Daddy is dead, it is infinitely more shameful and sad.

The memory makes my heart heavy and my eyes wet, but shame and sadness don’t kill my desire, anymore. They feed it and make it deeper and hotter. That’s what it means to be the new Alice, I guess.

I slowly drop to my knees, sliding my lips and tongue down Selina’s body as I go, until my lips find the fragrant center of her sexual being. I nuzzle my nose in the cute patch of red hairs while I reach out with my tongue to find her clit.

She gasps and rises to her tippy-toes.

I look up at her, my eyes imploring. “Come down here with me.”

She quickly agrees and tries to get down on her knees in front of me, but I give her a shove halfway down, so she lands on her ass a little harder than I intended. Before she can complain, I crawl between her legs and bury my face in her pussy.

She reclines onto the stage floor, hugging my head with her thighs, and she pulls my hair and my face in tight.

Her pussy tastes better than I expect. Everything about sex has been better since I had become Alice.

I reach up to pinch her nipples while I suck on her clit, earning me fresh moans.

All the while, I keep my ass facing Jervis with my pussy calling out to him to join in.

He doesn’t, though, so I switch to fucking Selina with my fingers as I crawl up her body until we are face to face again. I want to be kissing her when she comes. I don’t want her thinking that I’m just doing as I am told. I want for her to remember this moment forever.

Selina is a quiet girl, but she nearly screams when at last she comes, yelling out Bruce’s name!

After she comes back to Earth, I laugh in her face, our lips only inches apart, and I whisper, “I thought you told me you two were just friends.”

That pisses Selina off, for some reason, and she quickly pushes me off of her. I worry that she’ll jump up and run away, but she rolls on top of me instead, swapping our positions and pinning me to the ground. Now it’s my turn to gasp.

Now we are face to face again, but she has a wicked, sadistic-looking grin on her face as she pays me back. She buries her face in my pussy and squeezes my tits, but she’s not gentle at all. I don’t need to pull her in tight. She digs into my skin with her fingernails, and she bites my pussy lips, and she nibbles on my clit.

“Ow! Ow!” I cry out with tears flowing, but I don’t ask her to stop or push her away. I don’t know if she’s trying to hurt me or if she remembers what I had told her about how I experience pain now. Either way, her furious lovemaking is pushing me toward some kind of orgasmic speed record, except that time is slowing down fast in my mind, letting me savor the pain and the pleasure. I close my eyes, and I don’t know if I’m screaming or if I’m silent. My senses are overwhelmed by Selina twisting my nipples and eating out my pussy. My hips buck, and my legs twist about, which means I’m about to come.

But that never happens.

I hear Jervis yelling something, and I feel Selina sliding away from my pussy. I try to pull her back. “Don’t stop,” I cry out, but it’s over.

Jervis stopped it. I look up and see him climbing over the tip rail onto the stage. He pushes Selina aside and shouts, “I’ve changed my mind. You’re my girl, and I’ll finish this.”

Now I know what should have been obvious: he is unable to share me with anyone. He wants to be my everything.

He climbs between my legs and takes over where Selina left off, except that he is much gentler, using only his tongue.

I close my eyes and give him a chance. I can tell he’s done this before, and that he’s trying to win my heart, but he’s coming in much too slow after Selina set a torrid pace.

I tap him on the shoulder, to get his attention, but he’s not ready to give up. He tells me to get on my hands and knees, then he whips out his dick and fucks me doggie style while pulling on my hair. A much better effort, and it feels fucking awesome. He so desperately wants for me to come, and I am breathing and moaning, expecting to come soon. But I don’t, and I can’t. I’m not sure why or what is missing.

He’s trying so hard and is getting so frustrated that I tell him to stand up and let me suck him off. Maybe if I can satisfy him, he’ll be able to satisfy me after. Besides, I’ve never given a blow job before, and the idea always excited me, so that can’t hurt.

I imagine gently sucking him like a lollypop. I never had a dick in my mouth, so I wanted to savor the moment. But he has much rougher ideas. He grabs my head and roughly slams his dick into the back of my throat time and again. It’s a miracle I’m not puking up my granola dinner. I manage to shorten his thrusts by holding the base of his dick with one of my hands.

He starts spitting out obscenities to express his pleasure or his anger, I’m not sure which, and now I’m fingering myself while I fellate him, hoping I can get us both off at the same time. We could share that moment. That would be intimate, right? But soon I realize he’s coming too fast, and I can’t slow him down.

His sperm squirts onto the back of my throat, almost making me gag, but I recover in time to suck out the rest while he relaxes and enjoys his moment. Mmm, gooey and it reminds me of when I ate oysters that one time. Not bad. I always thought it would gross me out when I finally tasted it, but then again, nothing grosses me out anymore.

I look up at him to show him that I swallowed it all, and I smile as if to thank him for sharing. That’s what guys like, right?

Not Jervis, apparently. Or at least it doesn’t change his attitude.

“You’re not Alice,” he complains bitterly, and he looks me over from head to toe, but not in the way I’m used to. He’s looking at me as if to say, who the fuck are you, really?

“I’m not … Alice?” I ask, confused and worried. I don’t know why, but I want to be Alice. “Are you sure? Did I do something wrong?”

“Get back on your hands and knees,” he commands.

I cower from his anger but obey like a naughty dog.

I  swallow as I watch him kneel beside me. He grabs the hair on the back of my head like it’s a collar and holds it firmly with his left hand, as he raises his right hand to slap me.

He knows I get off on this. Is that what he’s trying to do? Then why does he look so angry? Just to add to the fantasy?

I actually yelp when I feel the slap on my ass. It feels more like a whip than a hand.

When I look back to the hand that is punishing me, I see that he’s actually hitting me with his belt!

I hold my breath as I see him raise his hand again, but I cry out when the leather strap strikes again.

I try to crawl away before he can strike again, but he simply says, “Stay still.”

It feels like several hands grab me, keeping me from moving, and Jervis hits me square on my pussy, and the pain drives away any question that he means this as punishment.

“How could I ever think that a filthy slut like you is Alice,” he lashes out with words, as his belt lashes my ass.

Now I’m crying. Hard.

And now comes the shame, as my pussy drips and my nipples tingle and my body enjoys every second of this, but my heart does not. I thought he loved me, and I thought I loved him. I don’t care if it is real, or if he conjured it with a spell, because I felt it either way, but now I only feel heartbreak. While shame and pain feeds whatever masochistic demon that has possessed me, heartbreak does not. It merely hurts, and I feel that pain more than anything else.

So time is not slowing down much at all. My ass is not healing as he continues to attack and curse.

But after a few more lashes, I realize something: I don’t care what he thinks of me, anymore. I don’t love him anymore. I might even hate him.

His spell over me must be broken.

Once I realize that, a sense of freedom invades me even as I bear a stray attack on my thighs. There is nothing keeping me here any longer.

I leap out of his grasp before he senses anything is amiss, and I jump to my feet.

He is not stunned, though, and he reaches for my hand. Fortunately for me, my body is turned on enough to give me the edge, or maybe those Karate lessons are finally paying off because I slip past his grasp and manage to knock him down with a quick kick from my other foot.

I have to get out of here as fast as possible before the Tweeds realize something is wrong, but Selina is just standing there, still trapped by Jervis’s spell. I can see the panic in her eyes, but it’s like she’s frozen in her own body. I can’t just leave her here with this madman.

“Come on Selina,” I say quietly, in case the Tweeds are sleeping at their guard duties.

Selina begins to move uncertainly.

“Stay,” Jervis yells out as he tries to get to his feet.

Selina freezes again.

But if I remember correctly, Jervis gave us both the power to free her, so I say, “You are no longer our slave.”

Now, Selina nearly falls as she escapes her bondage.

“Let’s get out of here,” I shout, knowing the Tweeds must have caught on by now.

As we run towards the corner of the stage, I grab the bikini bottom and tunic I had dropped on the floor two days ago and which remained there undisturbed for two days. It’s not much, but we’ll need whatever clothes we can get a hold of when we get outside.

Selina has already leaped off the stage like an acrobat and is waiting for me while I carefully climb over the tip rail and carefully hop to the ground.

“Can you go any slower?” she asks, as we dart towards the in the front of the building, which looks like an easy escape, until the Tweeds appear on either side, blocking our path.

I grab Selina’s hand and pull her the opposite direction towards the emergency exit in the back. This sure feels like an emergency.

The door is old and requires two hard shoves for us to open it, but we still escape with plenty of time to spare.

The Tweeds may be intimidating, but they aren’t very fast.


	6. Flirting With Peril

I burst through the door and intend to run away until I can’t run anymore, but Selina only runs about 100 feet and shouts, “Hey, slow down, Zoey! ... Alice!?”

I look around as we decelerate, and I see that nobody is following us.

“Am I running too fast?” I ask as I slow down.

“Of course not,” Selina says as she catches up and grabs the bikini bottom out of my hand and immediately stops to put it on. “But nobody is following us, and I’d rather not be streaking through the streets of Gotham wearing only my shoes.”

“Oh,” I say. “I didn’t think he’d give up chasing me so fast.”

“Why not?” Selina asks, covering her tits with her hands. “He finally figured out that you aren’t Alice. I hope you figured that out, too. Are you going to wear that thing, or are you going to keep running around naked? I know being naked is no big deal for you.”

Selina was pointing at the tunic in my hands, which I had forgotten about. It barely counts as clothing, but I pull it over my head and squeeze into it. Selina looks disappointed. Apparently she was hoping I wouldn’t want it so she could wear it herself and wouldn’t need to constantly hold her hands over her tits.

“Now you owe me two sets of clothes,” she says. Then she grabs my hand and drags me into an alley. “Come on, let’s get off the street.”

“Where should we go now?” I ask while rubbing my palms against my thighs.

Selina snaps, “What do you mean by ‘we’?  There is no ‘we’. There never was.”

I frown. “Oh. I thought …”

“You thought what? Because we fucked back there that we are suddenly friends or something? Well, news flash, I was hypnotized. Basically you raped me. OK, last night, I stood by while Barbara raped you, so I guess that makes us even, but how the hell does that make us friends?”

“I was hypnotized, too. I didn’t have a choice, either,” I pout.

“I don’t buy it,” Selina fires back. “It sounded to me like you talked him into including me in your sick fantasies.”

“I thought you wanted the same thing before he got there,” I explain while rubbing my thighs harder. “At least you got off. You guys just left me hanging.”

Selina looks shocked. “Is that why you are doing that with your hands? Damn Zoey! That’s some slutty shit!”

I wince and look away, feeling the tears coming back, and I really don’t want to cry. “I told you about that stuff I drank. I can’t help it.”

Selina shakes her head. “I’m not buying that, either. You were fucking horny as hell, but I didn’t see any special powers. Your ass is still red and hasn’t healed at all. I think that potion you took has worn off, and this is all just you being a horny bitch.”

I shake my head, but I can’t explain it. Maybe she’s right. Time had barely slowed down at all even while she was eating me out, and my ass still feels really sore. “I’m sorry. Maybe you are right. I just really like you …” I say, starting to cry.

Selina’s expression softens when she sees my tears, but her words hit hard. “What do you want, Zoey? You want pity sex because you didn’t get a happy ending?”

“Why are you being mean?” I cry. “I know you wanted it in there, too. You weren’t a robot or anything.”

Selina sneers at me, shaking her head, then starts walking away, saying, “I don’t hate you, Zoey, but you need help, and I can’t give it to you. Don’t you dare tell Bruce about any of this!” Suddenly she darts away from me, and I begin to chase after her, but she leaps effortlessly and grabs onto a fire escape and quickly sprints to the roof and is gone.

I stand below the fire escape but don’t even try jumping. I’m amazed that anyone could make that jump.

I lean against the building and try to collect myself and try to understand why I’m so upset.

I feel like I felt before, in the club, when Jervis rejected me. I felt my heart breaking, and it took everything out of me. Now I feel the same way. I’ve fallen in love with Selina, too, and now that she’s rejected me, it’s devastating. It’s like all of the good things that potion gave me are gone, but the emotional chaos it brings remains.

I walk down the alley, not at all sure where to go. I can’t go back to the club, at least not while Jervis is there. I can’t go back to Wayne Manor and have Bruce see me like this. Maybe I’ll go back to the hospital and wait for Marilyn to wake up, but that might take a whole day.

Besides, I’m not feeling well. Maybe the hospital is the best place for me, now. My nose won’t stop running, I’m sweating like crazy, and my legs feel jittery. I’m a complete mess.

I believe that I must look as unattractive as I feel right now. Maybe that’s why Selina and Jervis both pushed me away. I’m afraid to look in a mirror. My looks had always been the only thing that gave me confidence, and if I’ve lost that… I don’t want to think about it.

When I get to the end of the alley, I am confronted with a well lit street. It is only about 10 PM and Gotham has a healthy night life, so there is plenty of foot traffic still about. Feeling really down about myself, I want to get past here as quickly as possible, and the only option I see is a narrow passageway a block away and across the street.  Maybe if I walk naturally then other pedestrians will mind their own business and not notice that my tunic is basically a fishnet.

Of course, as soon as I leave the alley, that hope is dashed. I imagine the street lights are following me, like search lights, and just about everyone’s eyes follow along almost as soon as I step into the open.

“Well, hello there!” says one intregued man as I hurry by him. One girl smacks her boyfriend in the head for looking at me too long. Two large working workers give me a cat call when I finally reach the new alley and slip out of their view.

Once off the main street again, I lean against the building, hidden by the shadows.

I take a deep breath.

But what I feel is not relief.

I feel excitement coming back, and I don’t know what to make of it. I feel like an addict who was going through withdrawl and then suddenly gets a taste of their precious drug again.

And oh does it feel good!

Does that mean the powers are back, too?

Feeling curious, I lift the hem of my tunic and squeeze my ass, wondering if the welts from Jervis’ belt have healed or not. My ass feels sensitive, but I don’t feel any pain, and I can’t actually see my ass without a mirror, so I stroke it up and down. I can’t tell if the redness is gone, but I like the way it feels.

Then I notice that a man is peeking around the corner of the alley watching me.

The surprise spikes my excitement, and the I’m afraid of how fast and how easily I’m swept up in that horny high again. I cover my face and run down the passageway away from him, and time slows down dramatically.

The passageway then ends at a wider, perpendicular alley that is almost wide enough to be a street, but it is empty at this time of night. The neighborhood seems to take pride in this alley, keeping it clean and friendly to pedestrians, though it is vacant this late at night. The alley is intermittedly lit by lights shining down from the adjacent buildings, but punctuated by shadows where the light is blocked from clothes and sheets hanging from clotheslines.

I pause at the intersection and look around. I’m alone, now.

A wooden bench and table are fixed into the ground near the intersection, and cigarette butts litter around the fixtures.

The bench is half in light and half in shadow, and I sit on the darker half of the bench and I pause to take account of my feelings.

I’m confused. Selina and Jervis each worked my instruments and my heart for several minutes, but they could never get me past second gear.  Yet a peeping tom revved my engine and would have taken me to the promised land, if I had given him a chance.

It doesn’t make sense. Why does he have that Selina and Jervis did not?

I ponder the question, but I don’t wait for an answer. My body is craving satisfaction, and shame is becoming less of a consideration.  I massage my clit with one hand and my left breast with the other, and I let my fingers and fantasies take over.

And then I pause as the answer is suddenly clear. Being watched is my fantasy. Being Alice and sucking Jervis's dick and fucking an unconscious Selina was his fantasy. He was forcing his kinks into my mind, and my heart would not make that climb to the peak for someone else’s passion. My powers would only be triggered by my own feelings.

Now, working my clit on this public bench, I’m totally free to feel my own feelings, even if those feelings are enhanced by a crazy lust drug disease infecting my blood. That doesn’t matter. That disease is now a part of me. I can no more be free of that than I can be free from my own mind.

So this is who I am now, and I’m fine with that for the moment, so long as I can FINALLY get myself off. That’s all I really care about now.

I don’t need a partner to set me free. I can do it myself.

My body craves a quick release, but I want to take it slow. I’ve already endured the suspense, and I don’t want to end it in a quick bang. I want to relish it. If I take it slow, I can make it feel like hours.

Time slows down, but not slow enough, because I don’t get very far before I hear a door open only about thirty feet away, and then a crashing sound against some trash cans. 

Fuck! I think, wondering if I’ll ever get off tonight. I stand up from the bench and hide in the shadows, peeking around a drain pipe.

I see a man struggling with a woman in the alley. He is pressing her head against a brick wall and pushing down her pants.

Time is moving slowly, and the man is not very big.

I can take him, I think. I’m stupid for even thinking that, but after being shamed by Selina, I feel like I need to do something good. Helping this stranger should make me feel better about myself.

Like a total idiot, I step out into the light and shout, “Let her go!”

Then I remember that I’m only dressed in a nearly see through tunic and wonder-land slips, and I have second thoughts of this superhero plan.

I don’t recognize the predator, but he seems to recognize me. “You’re that stripper from the bar! I put a dollar on the stage and you gave me nothing.  I guess the bomb made a bigger impression. Well, I guess it’s time for me to collect with interest!”

He pushes his victim aside and rushes towards me, instead. I easily parry his slow-motion attack and knock him down at the same time. He gets up and tries again, without much affect, giving me a burst of confidence and excitement, but the excitement isn’t sexual at all, and I feel that time is speeding up to normal. It’s like confidence kills my powers, and gives my opponent a fighting chance – it’s fucked up. I’d better dispatch him quickly, I think.

But as I’m about to attack, I stop, because the door opens again and another man appears behind him, and the new figure has no face. He’s wearing a burlap mask that looks like it’s sewn together by a madman.

I feel a shiver run down my spine. This is enough for me. I don’t even think. I turn around and try to follow the girl I just rescued out of the alley.

Except that a third man is now standing there. He must have walked up behind me. His face is white with red hair and red lipstick dramatically painted on to make him look like a psychotic clown. He laughs like that criminal Jerome who died recently.

The man I was fighting stands up, wipes blood off of his noise, and he points at me, saying, “Hey, boss, it’s that bitch from the club.”

“Is this man bothering you, young lady?” the clown asks.

I’m cowering in between the three men with no place to back up to. In answer to his question, I nod my head like a frightened little girl. My powers are all but gone.

Suddenly, the clown raises a pistol and fires it at the head of the man I was just fighting, dropping him instantly to the ground.

I scream at the sound of the gunshot and back up until my shoulders bump against the brick wall behind me. I’m too afraid to look at the clown.

“No ‘thank you’?” he asks, disappointed. “Very rude, you know.”

Finally I look at him and weakly say, “Thank you.”

“That’s better,” he says with an even bigger smile. “So you are that dancer? The girl they are calling Peril?”

I blink. How does everyone suddenly know that name. I dare to contradict. “My name is Zoey.”

He bites his lip and looks away for a second, as if deep in thought, then he says. “Nah, Zoey doesn’t suit you. That name means ‘life,’ doesn’t it? No, Peril is a much better name for someone like you, especially right now, when life must feel so precious.”

That scares the shit out of me, but I feel paralyzed. I know I should try to fight my way out of this, or at least try to run away, but my mind has settled on the freeze response, and it won’t listen to reason.

“This is quite a crime fighting costume you have here,” he says as he takes a step back to look my body over.

His eyes look hungry, and I feel my pussy aching in response. But I’m not embarrassed by my lustful reaction this time. This could be my way out. Maybe this clown is right, and I should be wearing so little all the time. I feel time slowing and my confidence rising, as he lifts the hem of my tunic and turns me around to get the full picture.

“Hey Scary,” he says to the faceless man as he lifts my tunic up over my tits. “What do you think we can do with this?”

While they both admire my assets, I spin around and hit the clown with an elbow, which knocks him backwards. Then I kick him in the chest as he falls. Although I strike him right where I want to, he reaches out with his hand and bumps my leg as it hits, sending me off balance backwards.

I’m not moving fast enough. Maybe I should have let them play around with me a little more, I think.

Then I feel a hand reach around my head and hold a cloth to my face.

I panic, thinking it’s chloroform, and I fight to get away before I faint.

I escape his grasp easily, but the vapor in my lungs is not what I expected.

It’s worse.

It’s some kind of dark magic. Now, I’m Alice in Terror-land.

The world around me is shaking.

The exteriors of the buildings turn to putrified flesh, crawling with worms.

I fall onto my ass and try to wriggle backwards, away from the giant cackling mouth that now stands over me.

Behind the mouth is a faceless octopus that grabs both of my legs and holds them still like vice-grips.

The two monsters roar at each other, then they lift me in the air and roughly drop me on something hard a few feet away.

I don’t know if I’m scared silent or yelling like a scream queen. All I hear is the sound of the laughter.

I close my eyes, but I can’t block them from my vision, as though I can see right through my eyelids.

Two more cackling mouth-monsters appear, and the laughing gets louder.

A pair of tentacles grabs my wrists and hold them tight, while another pair grabs my calves and forces my legs apart, stretching me like I’m a wishbone and presenting my pussy like a gift to the monster waiting between my legs.

The next moment lasts a long time, and my ever-ready pussy aches and waters, like a mouth anticipating a meal.

Finally, the meal is served as a tentacle thrusts deep inside my pussy, and the indecent chain reaction begins.

My hands are suddenly free, as another tentacle is thrust into my mouth while my head is held tight. I raise my hands to push the tentacle away, but my hands pause mid-air, hesitating, because my terror is slowly turning into curiousity and desire.

An anaconda wraps around my waist and lifts my ass in the air, and then something probes my anus, while a new tentacle probes my pussy. Then, all at once, each invader thrusts into all three holes as if synchronized. The one in my ass makes me cry out, because that part of me was virgin and barely lubricated. But the difference between pain and pleasure is beginning to blur.

The tentacle in my mouth squirts before it pulls out and and then spits the rest of its load on my face.

A moment later, the creepy, cackling mouth once again is looking me right in the eyes. Except everything that was creepy before is now exciting.

I’m beginning to see things for what they are, again.

I blink my eyes, and the huge mouth morphs back into the clown, who is staring in my eyes as he slaps my tits like a little boy with toys, just to see them bounce.

I grab his head and press my mouth on those beautiful, grotesque lips, and then I stick my tongue inside his mouth, against his tongue, giving him my first ever snowball kiss.

His eyes open wide in shock, then disgust, then hysterical laughter.

He jumps up and hops around in insane delierium with his pants down by his ankles, while another man moves in to take his place, filling my mouth again with a fresh dick.

The fear drug is now defeated completely by my insatiable, slutty nature, but I am no less of a captive to my feelings.

I am no longer a victim; I am the monster.

I came into this alley to get off, and that is what I intend to do. More than once.

I squeeze my tits while three men still have their way with me. Shame and pride and pleasure and pain and hate and love all squeeze into my body in a single moment, radiating from my pussy and nipples and mouth, building and building towards a moment of critical mass.

And then everything hits in a series of big bangs, one after the other, each making my body convulse and cry out.

I ride that wave of lust and fire until time seems to completely stop and my mind finally returns to me in that fleeting moment of utter peace that arrives after the passion spontaniously combusts, freeing my mind and soul.

With time standing still, I look around and account for what had just happened, what is still happening, and what I had done.

I’m laying face down on the table in the alley with my legs hanging over the edge and onto the bench. A heavyset man is standing between my legs and is thrusting into my rear and reigning me in by pulling my hair. The other men appear to have had their fill and have stepped away. Cum is dripping from my mouth and thighs and hair. The situation could not be any more degrading.

Even knowing this, I still feel at peace. I don’t even feel dirty.

I feel blessed.

My heart seems to be beating very slowly, but in reality, it might be racing.

Finally, one thought disturbs my peace.

Once again, I’ve been raped. It doesn’t matter that I was complicit in the end. It doesn’t matter that I totally got off on it. What bothers me is what these men thought they were doing to me. They thought they were destroying me.

After being taken against my will twice in the past two days, I am no longer willing to say no harm, no foul. After Barbara slapped the name Peril on me, the word has already spread in just one day, and everyone now sees me as an easy prey, and if I let this slide, my reputation will slide even further, if that is possible.

So, while time is still on my side, I decide to act.

The man who is still in my ass must remain unsatisfied.

I reach between my legs and when he again slams into my rear, I grab his balls and squeeze them hard. He immediately lets go of my hair and dismounts.

By the time I’m standing, the other three men realize that something is wrong, but I leap towards the largest man before he knows how to respond. I see him raising his arms to his chest defensively, so I kick him in the balls instead, which he leaves undefended.

Then I have a crazy thought: I’d better stop targeting these mens’ balls, or I’ll be called a ball-buster.

The clown is now jumping towards me from behind, grasping at my arm, but I fling my elbow backward and it cracks against his cheek. He stumbles, and I spin around, ready to hit his head again with my other fist, but he’s already raising his hands to block that strike, so I redirect my attack to his solar plexus, and he collapses to the ground in a heap. His laughter dies in the air, and his painted smile looks pathetic, now, and I actually utter, “Aww,” because while I’m delivering righteous judgement, my twisted mind affectionately remembers that snowball kiss a moment ago.

The man with no face, seeing the change in fortunes, turns to run away; but his burlap mask restricts his vision, so he trips over a barrel of trash when attempting to escape.

I punch him so hard in the back of his head that I twist my wrist real good, so I pause to rub my wrist and relax, knowing that justice is served and that my wrist will heal very quickly, maybe even before I come down from this high.

Suddenly, I hear a thud and I spin around.

I’m stunned to see Selina standing over the now unconscious clown. She’s kicking a switchblade away from his hand.

“Looks like you’ve got your mojo back”, she says, “But next time, don’t turn your back on a guy unless you’re sure he’s down.”

Selina is wearing a kid-size, Gotham Rogues t-shirt over the white bikini bottom she had snagged from me earlier.

“Where did you come from?” I ask.

“Up here,” she says, then she climbs up the side of building and grabs a bathrobe from a clothes line and tosses it to me. “Take this. You need it.”

“Were you following me?” I ask.

Selina looks away. “Bruce would never forgive me if I let you die out here.”

“You saw everything?” I ask nervously while I slip out of the now ruined tunic and slip into the terry cloth robe.

“Sure did, you perv,” she says without a hint of humor. “You’re one sick kitten, but that was a nice thing you did, helping out that girl. Stupid, but nice.”

I hold the robe tightly to my body, not out of modesty but because I can’t understand why Selina is talking to me this way and it makes me nervous.

“Sorry about what I said, earlier,” Selina adds while kicking the knife again playfully. “You should come back to my place and clean up.”

I wait for her to look at me, but she keeps looking away, so finally I ask, “Really?”

“Yeah,” she replies, and suddenly she starts climbing the building again. “If you can keep up.”

 


	7. Sleez

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Selina and Zoey become better friends, and Bruce delivers a surprise.

Selina’s crib is in the loft above a YMCA. Construction had long ago cut the attic off from the interior of the building, so we climb four stories up the fire-escape, and Selina helps me reach and climb through a small open window.

Her home leaves much to be desired. She has a twin bed with clean sheets and a rather nice couch, but everything else is basically repurposed trash. The floor is a splinter waiting to happen. Partially removed staples litter the edges of the floors and walls where Selina had removed fiberglass insulation.

“Do you have a bathroom?” I ask hopefully.

“Downstairs,” she replies flatly, not at all embarrassed. “We’ll go there in a minute and clean up. I’ve never felt dirtier than I do now. But first pick out some clothes, unless you like wearing that huge towel everywhere.”

The bathrobe is comfy but awkward, and I’m eager to replace it.

Selina had separated the open space of the loft into three rooms using a combination of cardboard and curtains. She opens a curtain revealing a large, makeshift closet with two rows of clothes on hangers.

“These all fit me, more or less, so they’ll probably fit you, too,” she says.

At first, I’m amazed at the size and variety of her wardrobe, but when I look more closely, I have to laugh at some of the outfits. I find a child’s t-shirt of Mickey Mouse that happens to match our size. Another outfit was clearly stolen from a local fast-food restaurant. Selina was a bit of a hoarder with clothes. I doubt she wore half of these clothes even once.

“Hurry up,” she complains as she squirms, as though she’s feeling dirtier by the second.

I’m scouring through Selina’s clothes, looking for any skirts or short-sleeved shirts, but I can’t find any. Apparently Selina hates showing skin under all circumstances. I’m disappointed until I find a sleeveless unitard with a sexy leopard pattern that brings a smile to my face. I can’t wait to try that on.

I fold the outfit over my arm and follow Selina to a corner of the attic.

Boards were removed from this section of the floor, and Selina reaches down and slides a heavy, metal block away, revealing an opening to a locker-room below. Selina drops a rope ladder down and descends.

I follow. I’ve never climbed such a flimsy ladder before, so I descend gingerly, making nervous, girly sounds that grate on Selina’s nerves until she finally walks away.

Once down, I hurry to catch up with her, as though she might get away.

When I arrive at the showers, she ignores me while she removes her dirty clothes.

I’m only wearing a bathrobe, so I toss it aside in a single motion.

The showers at the YMCA were meant to accommodate ten men. Five nozzles line opposite walls of the open space. I drop my robe and step under one of the middle showerheads. The water starts out cold, but I tough it out and step under the stream while dramatically shivering and laughing.

Again, Selina ignores my childish antics as she picks a showerhead as far away from me as possible. She barely moves as the water washes over her.

This is my second shower within the past two hours, but after what I’ve just been through, I feel like I’m washing off a week’s worth of dirt. I rub soap all over my body and lather it up. It feels luxurious.

Selina is not feeling so refreshed. She just stands there, facing the wall shyly, brooding, as the water washes over her.

“Stop looking at me,” she says without looking up.

“Sorry,” I say. I wasn’t actually looking at her. Not much, anyway. But I turn away to give her privacy while I finish up. I sense that she won’t even begin to wash herself until I have left.

Once back in the locker room, I dry off using the bathrobe as a towel before I try on the nylon unitard. It’s a tighter squeeze than I expected, but the fabric stretches very well.

I look at myself in the mirror and gasp at the mess on my head. I shape my hair with my fingers for a moment, sigh, then walk away from the mirror, futilely scanning the area for a lost comb.

As I step out of the locker room, I find myself walking into a gymnasium. Selina is taking her time in the shower, so I take a look around. I turn on the lights revealing a full basketball court with extra sets of hoops along the side. But oddly I see no basketballs.

I walk 30 feet into the gym, away from the showers and the double doors leading into the main building, until I arrive at the only door without an “EXIT” sign over it.

Behind this door, I find mops and brooms and cleaning fluids. Digging deeper inside, I find a box full of folded, white t-shirts. The closet is bigger than it first appears. In the shadows, behind everything, I finally see a crate full of basketballs.

I grab a basketball, and I bounce it a few times, using two hands.

I smile at the memory of when I last dribbled a ball. I was seven years old. That was also the last time I played anything with children my own age. I can barely walk while I dribble, but I still have a childlike enthusiasm lying to me that I’m talented.

 “I’m open!” I hear from behind me. I turn to see Selina standing there, smiling. She didn’t even have a bathrobe to dry off with, so her normally curly hair falls straight and wet. She’s wearing a plain, black shirt with black jeans. Her shirt is soaked, so I laugh. Her smile turns into an impatient stare. “Pass it, already!”

“Oh,” I say, as I toss the ball to her, a little higher than I intended.

But Selina steps forwards and leaps and slams the ball into the hoop in a single motion. She appears to pause in mid-air before landing on all fours like a cat.

“Wowzer!” I say, stunned.

“Now your turn,” she challenges while tossing the ball back to me.

I shake my head. “No way.”

“You wuss. Let’s see what you’ve got,” she insists.

I shrug and sigh and jump as gracefully as a turkey trying to fly. The ball misses everything. I crash to the ground, landing on my ass with my legs spread.

“Wow, major camel toe,” Selina says, and I can’t tell if she’s complaining or teasing. “Do you always dress like you’re in a strip club? You should really wear underwear under that thing.”

“Look who’s talking,” I reply pointing at her soaking wet shirt, where her perky tits glow through the black fabric like flashlights. “You’re too sexy for that shirt.”

Selina looks down, gasps, and she immediately covers her chest.

“Aw, don’t hide them!” I complain while laughing hard. “How can you be so shy after we were muff diving like an hour ago?”

Selina glares at me. “Shut up! I don’t want to remember what that perv made us do, but I guess you are fine with that. Is sex all you can think about? How can you be so slutty after what we’ve just been through? After what they did to **_you_** in the alley? Does it bother you at all?”

I’m stunned by her venom. She was fun just a moment ago, and suddenly it’s all very serious, and it puts everything into perspective. “Not really,” I reply as I rise from the floor. “It helped me forget for a minute that Daddy is dead, and Marilyn is in a coma.”

Selina’s eyes soften. “Sorry. That sucks. But I don’t know how being hypnotized and raped could make you feel any better. Is it because you’re a stripper?”

“What do you mean?” I ask, bewildered.

“Maybe you are used to all of the fucking and abuse, but I’m not, and I won’t ever fucking accept it,” Selina declares with a haughty stare.

“You think you know me?” I ask, choking anxiously. “You think I fuck everybody I see? You think I don’t have any pride?  I only had sex once before all this shit went down and you and your friends fucked me up in the oh-so-respectable Sirens club, before everyone had their way with me, but I thought I could take it, because Bruce was there for me after the explosion, and you were there for me after everything else. But that wine … that potion, whatever the fuck it is, is ruining everything. It’s all gone to shit since I took it, and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Damn it!”

My vision is blurry, and I suddenly realize that my eyes are flowing with tears, which is embarrassing enough, but my pussy is dripping as well, soaking into the tights, and that’s just intolerable, knowing that I have no control over my feelings at all. Selina is right; I’m all fucked up. I can’t feel anything without turning into a pathetic, horny mess.  

I hate her when she puts her arms around me, eyes full of pity, making me feel even more pathetic. She purrs apologies into my ear, which sends a shiver down my spine, paralyzing me. She wipes my tears away with her thumbs. Her eyes penetrate mine, forcing me to close them, as though I was looking into the sun. I feel her warm breath waft over my lips and nose. She’s moving in for a kiss, but I whisper, “Please don’t.”

Selina hesitates, then she releases me and steps back and says, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK, but I can’t handle any more regrets. Not mine. Not yours.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Selina says, but without conviction, then she looks away and at the ground. “What was I thinking? This is nuts!”

I touch her arm. “You don’t know what you want, do you?”

“ ** _You_** don’t know what **_you_** want!” Selina laughs defensively. “I know what **_I_** want!”

 “You want Bruce,” I offered, stating what had been obvious to me since I had met her at Sirens.

“Yeah, I like boys,” she adds quickly, still refusing to look at me.

“I like boys,” I agree. “But I like girls, too. I think we are more alike than you want to admit.”

My tears are gone now. The tables are quickly turning. My confidence is returning while hers wanes. My sorrows and fears can’t compete with my overcharged libido. She’s still facing away from me when I wrap my arms around her waist, my hands resting on her hips.

“Barbara said the same thing to me,” Selina admits reluctantly. “It wasn’t true. I mean, she wants me, but I don’t want her.”

“Do you want me?” I ask into her ear, while I let my arms inch higher towards her chest.

She shakes her head and holds my arms down. “You’re all fucked up on that virus. You can’t even mourn your dad for five seconds before you are horny again.”

“I know,” I say. My desire is mixed with shame. “But if I wasn’t like this, would you still want me?”

“I **_never_** wanted you,” Selina replies with emphasis, but her body is responding in a very different way. “I’m not like this! Maybe your virus is affecting me, too. Maybe it’s contagious. Maybe Jervis is still fucking with my head.”

“Maybe,” I whisper. “Or maybe that’s just what you want to believe because you never thought of yourself this way before.”

“No …” Selina begins and then gasps as my hands break past her paper-thin resistance and fondle her tits. She cups her hands over my hands.

But then she pushes my hands away and tries one last time to resist. I give her a little space to make up her mind.

“No! You don’t understand,” she says, arguing with herself as much as with me. She won’t look at me as she lets her walls drop. “I know I act like I don’t give a shit most of the time, but it’s hard for me. I was a virgin, too, but I wasn’t like you.  I didn’t give a crap about ‘love’ or ‘sex’ or ‘romance.’ That’s all bullshit. I know that. But I’m also an idiot. Sometimes I think the right person might come along, and everything will be different. I can’t help myself. But my dreams always turn out to be bullshit.  Now, as it turns out, I lose my cherry to some girl who thinks she is Alice in Wonderland. Someone who doesn’t give a shit about me.”

“That’s not true,” I say as I try to put my arms around her and look in her eyes. “I care about you. I think I love you.”

That was going too far.

“Bullshit!” Selina yells while pushing me away hard. Then she grabs the basketball off the floor and throws it at me. “Fuck you! You’ll say anything with that virus running through your veins.”

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how I’d feel about her if I hadn’t tasted that wine, but this is who I am now, and this is how my heart is now.

Selina turns around angrily and starts to walk away.

I follow after her, and I keep talking urgently. “I love how your face glows bright red when I say you are beautiful. I love how strong you are, and I love how weak you are. I love how you pretend to be shy. I love how you get angry when you are turned on, like when you were dancing for me.”

Selina spins around like a tiger ready to strike. She gives me a furious shove, and I stumble backward until she pins me against the wall. My knees quiver.

“I don’t believe you,” she hisses as she challenges me with her stare. Her eyes are only inches from mine. Her lips are even closer, breathing heavily, daring me to kiss her. Again.

This time I don’t hesitate. I take the dare. I kiss her good.

She’s determined to show me there are consequences. She pushes me against the wall. If this is going to happen, she’s going to be in control.  She says, “I don’t like it when you tell me what to do.” 

“Okay,” I say nervously.

“You don’t love me! Don’t give me that shit!” She buries her fingers in my hair and twists it until it hurts.

“O-okay,” I stutter as I fall to my knees.

“I want to spank you.”

I gasp and quiver. “Okay.”

I cry out in surprise as she yanks my hair down sharply, forcing me to bend over until my face lays flat on the floor.

She kneels beside me and strokes my nylon wrapped ass before pulling her hand away, preparing to strike.

A hundred wicked emotions rush through me, as I submit to the inevitable spanking.

Suddenly I hear a distant coughing sound.

Selina and I both glance up to see Bruce watching us from the rafters. I think he’s disappointed with both of us.

In an instant, Selina and I stand and step away from each other and make ourselves look decent.

“How long have you been up there?” Selina demands, apparently unconcerned about how he got up there.

Bruce hesitates then replies, “It doesn’t matter. You weren’t at Sirens, so I came here.”

“Well, you found me,” Selina snapped. “So what do you want?”

Bruce drops from the ceiling. I know if I fell that far, I would have broken a bone or two, but he lands like an Olympic jumper, light as a feather. He talks to Selina as though I’m not there. “Sirens was bombed a few hours ago.”

Selina’s mouth drops, but she doesn’t say a word.

Bruce continues. “So, you hadn’t heard yet. Your friends were both bruised. They are fine, but several patrons were killed, and the bombers escaped.”

“Were they wearing smiley masks?” I ask urgently.

Bruce shakes his head. “Nobody saw the bombers this time, but soon after that, more bombs exploded at Indian Hill and even more at a house uptown being used as a brothel. Finally, an hour ago, three men tried to blow up Arkham, but hospital security caught them before they could do any harm. All three were dressed in white and were wearing those creepy masks. I was there when the cops arrested them.”

“What the fuck!” Selina says. “This must be Penguin’s new crew.”

Bruce shook his head. “Not likely. Penguin was at the Kindling Club when it was bombed. Then he was in police custody when the other bombs occurred. He’s got good alibies.”

“Then who are they?” I ask. “What do they want?”

“I heard Harvey talking with the bombers at the scene. They call themselves the Bright Knights, and they are very self-righteous. They claim that Gotham is sick, and they are simply trying to give it a cure. They say that they are fighting against the temptations that are corrupting the city, and the next attack will be much bigger, against the Devil of Hob’s Lane. When they began talking about aliens and mind control and the will of God, Harvey brushed them off as delusional or high, but they sounded sane to me.”

“And you want me to go with you to Hob’s Lane,” Selina surmised.

Bruce shrugs. “Would you rather leave this to the police? As far as they are concerned, the Bright Knights are only attacking degenerate groups who aren’t worth risking their lives over. They’d rather let the vigilantes and gangs fight for themselves and wash their hands when innocent people are hurt. I have to go because Zoey deserves to know why her dad was killed.”

Selina looks at me, raises her hand as if to say STOP, then she turns back towards Bruce and jumps forward, “OK, let’s go then.”

Bruce turns and runs beside Selina towards the exit signs, leaving me flat-footed.

Belatedly I run after them, calling out, “Hey, can’t I come?”

They pause. Selina says, “You aren’t up to this. We can’t babysit you. You should go to the hospital and be with your mom.”

“I can’t do anything for her at the hospital,” I objected. “It hurts too much seeing her like that. But maybe I can help you catch the people who put her there.”

Selina and Bruce look at each other doubtfully. Then Bruce says reluctantly, “OK, but only if you can keep up.”

 

***

I’m pretty quick on my feet, but Bruce and Selina aren’t merely running. They are also climbing over fences and jumping between buildings. What does Bruce have against driving a car?

I try my best to keep up with their obstacle course, but I’m no acrobat.

When they get to the river, I’m guessing they mean to swim, but instead, they leap from rock to rock and quickly cross to the other side.

I hesitate on the first rock. The natural bridge they traversed so effortlessly is barely visible under the full moon, and I cry out as I cut my toe and slip and suddenly struggle to keep myself from being carried away by the rapidly moving water.

Bruce and Selina watch me from the other side, and when I finally regain my footing and crawl pathetically back to the shore, Bruce yells something from across the river. Then they both climb up the bank on the opposite side of the river. I watch them until they disappear into the darkness.

Finally, I admit what I already knew; they were trying to lose me.

Now, I’m sitting on a rock, sore, out of breath, and feeling depressed. My leopard skin is soaking wet and sheer. I had mocked Selina when her nipples glowed under her shirt at the YMCA, but now I look like I’m wearing nothing but body paint.  I examine my bleeding toe in the near darkness. Besides a small cut, my feet are burning from running on pavement and dirt. My feet are not used to such abuse, and I’m amazed at how easily Selina ran bare-footed, as though she was wearing sneakers.

I look around. There are no bridges nearby that I can use to cross the river, and my friends have now both disappeared into the night. I don’t even know where this Hob’s Lane is.

I start to cry. I do that often these days. Another effect of the drug, maybe. I feel everything too deeply, and I know it, but that doesn’t change how I feel.

I feel lonely. I feel betrayed. I feel horny. I feel pathetic. I feel ashamed.

After a long time sitting on that rock, stewing in those emotions, I start to feel angry.

I climb back to my feet and attempt to cross the river again.

I stumble a few times, yet I continue. I slip, and a rock cuts through my nylon skin into my ass cheek, but I don’t pause even to assess the damage. I keep going.

Finally, I reach the other side and climb the bank and stand under the street lights of Metropolis Ave, looking towards the industrial district of Gotham.

I take a moment to breathe and collect my emotions.

They’ve abandoned me. I’m alone, in the dark. I touch my ass and squeeze a finger through the small hole in the fabric that was cut by the rock. It really stung, but no blood. I hope it doesn’t bruise too badly.

I straighten my unitard where it has bunched up, and I make sure my hair isn’t a total mess. If I think I look good, I will feel stronger, and I won’t chicken out.

Why did Bruce and Selina lead me here? Apart from the street lights, the area was almost entirely in darkness and shadows. This is an industrial lot, and everyone leaves this place when the workday ends. The buildings are extremely large and wide with no way through save for one partially lit path, so that’s where I go.

Although the path is too narrow for cars, it is marked by a street sign. The sign reads “Hob’s Lane.”

I’m relieved because that is the name Bruce had mentioned. Then I feel anxiety for the same reason.

This will be dangerous, I know, but I can’t stop now. Everything in my life has turned upside over the past two days, and nobody could tell me why. The only clue had been those smiley masks.  I’m sure I’ll find the answers here, somewhere.

I step nervously onto Hob’s Lane, feeling like I’m Alice again stepping into the rabbit hole. My last walk down a dark, quiet alley in Gotham was nowhere near as nice as Wonderland, so I’m ready to run at the first sign of trouble.

Hob’s Lane is a few hundred yards long with several smaller, dark alleys intersecting the sides, making for a very anxious walk, but the only sign of hostility is a cat chasing a mouse between trashcans.

After walking five minutes, the lane opens up to a very wide street and then it transforms into a pier stretching out into the Delaware Bay. I spin around and see a row of piers and still no lights, except for those illuminating the street.

No sign of Selina and Bruce. No sign of anybody.

I’m beginning to feel defeated when I see headlights approaching from the distance.

I skulk to a pile of pallets beside a long-neglected warehouse, thinking that is a good hiding space, but the car drives slowly by, only a few yards away. It continues to the warehouse, and then further into an open space which I now realize leads to a parking area under the building.

Nervously, I follow behind, stepping quietly, worrying both about making noise and about further irritating my scuffed, bare feet. The driveway leads down one level, and there I find a row of cars and small trucks.

By now the passengers in the car that had passed me have already parked, and I arrive in time to see their shadows climbing stairs into the building.

I follow well behind them. I finally see light above me, splashing into the stairway. I hear the beat of disco music, but I don’t hear any voices or activity, so I think I have a bit of walking to go.

But as soon as I reach the doorway of the first floor and look out, I’m stunned by what I see and hear.

This building may look like a decrepit warehouse on the outside, but inside it looks fancy and exotic. The walls appear to be covered in blue velvet. Strobes and black lights give the interior a party atmosphere not dissimilar to the look inside of the Kindling Club most nights.

But nobody is partying or dancing inside.

Instead, dozens of people are lined up against the walls, their arms folded onto their chests or laps. Several Bright Knights are lined up to my left. Barbara Keen and Renee Montoya stand with others at the far end. And Bruce and Selina are standing to my right, wearing the same clothes they wore when we separated at the river, but now with panicked looks on their faces.

Everyone is silent, standing at attention like soldiers, waiting for orders.

Only one person is moving at all, and I’m not even sure he is a person.

He stands around three feet tall with green skin and a brown robe. He looks more like Yoda than a human. Maybe the Bright Knights are right to think he’s an alien. But unlike Yoda, there is nothing wise or gentle in his appearance. Rather than a cane, he carries a whip. He looks downright creepy, and he cements this impression when he walks up to Barbara, reaches under her skirt and grabs her pussy and laughs like a twisted clown.

Barbara moans but lets him grope her, and nobody intervenes. Everyone stands still like mannequins.

I’m freaking out, and my heart is racing. Maybe Selina is right; maybe this is too much for me. There is nothing I can do here. Maybe if I tell the police, they’ll do something.

I turn around and take a step back down the stairs, when suddenly the green goblin’s voice calls out.

I'm paralyzed. Flustered.

“Zoey, where are you going?” he teases. “Or should I call you Peril? We’ve been waiting for you.”

 

 


End file.
